


Sins of the Fathers

by Emeryael



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Angst, Children, Family, Harm to Children, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, No Infinity War, No mpreg, Original Characters - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Child Abuse, Slash, Trauma, Wakanda, parenting, victim self-blame
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:42:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22339483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeryael/pseuds/Emeryael
Summary: A routine cleanup of a Hydra base leads to Steve and Bucky discovering that they have children, as a result of Hydra experiments. Wanting to do right by their offspring, Steve and Bucky take the children in and try to setup a happy domestic life together.Unfortunately, parenting is tough. Parenting two children with a long history of abuse is even harder. And that’s ignoring all the parties who have a vested interest in the children of Captain America and the Winter Soldier.Will Steve and Bucky be able to protect their children and keep their relationship intact?
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies. I am somewhat green to all this. Longtime browser of AO3, first time poster. If I’ve made any errors in formatting, please let me know. First chapter will mostly center around original characters, but we’ll meet up again with Steve and Bucky soon. I just wanted to put some effort and play around with the MCU a little, give a look at events from the perspective of an average agent of SHIELD.

Four years later, and they were still cleaning up Hydra’s goddamn messes. The work had slacked off some, but the fact that they were still finding bases to clean up, just further drove home how extensive the infiltration had been. Agent Ellis Weaver took a deep breath then entered the former Hydra base.

This base, tucked into some far-off corner of Sokovia, had been operating under a skeleton crew for a long time. Weaver guessed that with so many bases to raid, this little one had slipped through the dragnet. He’s not sure how, but right now, they were doing cleanup; hows and whys, means motives could be dealt with later.

Most Hydra bases and cells were designed to be able to mostly operate on their own, without having to wait for orders from on high. The nature of the infiltration made a fluid structure more practical, than the old way of doing things, where there was a distinct hierarchy answerable to a known brass at the top. It made it easier to stay hidden; if one base was compromised, then the rest were less likely to be caught as well.

The Hydra infiltration had operated much like the beast that was their symbol: fluid, able to easily be shaped to better overcome or slip past any obstacles in its path. Probably the only way to defeat Hydra would be to just burn the entire mothereffer down, like Hercules in the Greek myths, but their Hydra was far bigger than the one in the myth, its shape much harder to discern.

Most of the Hydra at this base had long fled into the hills. The few who stayed behind, were dead, with the scientists and soldiers opting to either bite down on a cyanide capsule or eat their pistols in the wake of SHIELD closing in on them. The base had been scanned. No explosives or bioweapons were to be found; all they had to do, was cleanup.

Weaver never knew how to feel about these kinds of raids. Part of him scowled at the cowardice, but at the same time, suicides saved them a lot of trouble. Bodies were easier to transport than people. Cleanup could be finished up a lot faster when there were no potential firefights. Most Hydra chose to surrender when cornered—when it came down to either a lengthy prison sentence or pledges of loyalty, loyalty usually took a hike—but even after four years, there were still some ardent true believers, determined to keep up the fight no matter what.

Others would deal with moving and disposing of human remains. Weaver and his crew were here to survey the base and gather equipment, weapons, and records. Then the whole mess would be boxed up and sent to facilities to be studied by SHIELD personnel. Everything would be cataloged, SHIELD would have more information on Hydra’s activities, and things would go on much as they had. Maybe someday they would eventually run out of bases to raid, but given how massive the infiltration had been, Weaver suspected SHIELD would be cleaning up Hydra messes until the end of time.

So far, most of what they were finding, confirmed Weaver’s suspicions. The people at the base were mostly scientists and technicians with only a couple of actual soldiers among them. This was strange. In the wake of the crash of the helicarriers, most Hydra scientists and techs saw the writing on the wall and opted to turn themselves in and cut deals with law enforcement. It made sense. In general, the scientists lacked the survivalist mindset needed to be fugitives. When faced with a choice between doing a whole lot of time under very unpleasant circumstances or surrendering, naming names, and serving fewer years under more palatable conditions, most opted for the latter.

Weaver didn’t concern himself too much with the bodies, but he did peek under the sheets, when the technicians were transporting what was left of Dr. Joseph Devereaux, out of some sick voyeuristic curiosity.

He had read some of the files before the raid. From what Weaver could tell, even Hydra considered Devereaux to be a little unhinged, not enough to have him killed, but enough to pack him away into an itty-bitty base in the far corner of nowhere, giving him only so much in terms of food and supplies. At the same time, while Hydra was clearly disturbed by Devereaux’s work, they still wanted to keep him around, a sign they still believed that his work might be of some use to them in the future. He wondered just what Devereaux was up to that even Hydra was a little freaked out by his experiments.

Weaver heard his crew over the radio as they described what they were finding. So far, nothing out of the ordinary for a Hydra base: computers, boxes and boxes of records, laboratory equipment, a crude crematorium which still had traces of bones and hair. No points for guessing what animal the bones and hair belonged to—Weaver had already seen the telltale signs of a bone pit near the base. Soon the forensic teams would move in, start digging around, and try to figure out which fragments belonged to which people.

“Ellis, I mean, Agent Weaver!” Ilene Statler’s shrill voice came over the radio, jarring his train of thought.

Weaver picked up his radio. “What’s going on?”

“I found something you might want to see. Go down the hall and take the third door on your left.”

He followed her instructions, found the door, and entered. Ilene was waiting for him, perched on a stool by a table.

At first, there was little to distinguish this lab among the others Weaver had found and cleaned out at this base, until he heard the crunch of glass under his feet.

It took Weaver a moment to work out what he had found. When he did, he found himself making the sign of the cross, even though he hadn’t set foot in a Catholic Church since his teens.

He was standing on petri dishes, smashed against the cold tile floor. Among the shards of broken glass, were embryos, human embryos.

Ilene played with a strand of her whitish-blonde hair. “Freaky, isn’t it? But there’s more.” She gestured towards what looked to be a mini-freezer.

The mini-freezer had been unplugged, leaving a puddle spreading at its base. Weaver squatted and opened the door. Inside, were more embryos.

Weaver stepped back, heart pounding in the hollows of his chest. He breathed deeply, until his brain slowed down enough to allow him to think. He lifted his chin. “Agent Statler, contact the biohazard team and tell them what you found. Afterwards, cordon off the area and keep searching the base.”

Ilene nodded and picked up her radio. Weaver left the room.

He continued to go through the motions, radioing fellow agents, cataloging whatever he found, but the discovery of the embryos had shaken him. He couldn’t stop thinking about his wife and boys back home.

He and his wife had tried for so many years to get pregnant. Eventually, they gave up and utilized IVF. Luckily for them, it worked on the first try and months later, their twin sons, Nicholas and James, were born.

It should have been the happiest moment of his life and God knows, he loved his sons to pieces, but the joy of their birth was forever shadowed by the crash of the helicarriers and the reveal of the Hydra infiltration.

The crash happened a few months before the boys were born. His wife had been laid up on bedrest at the time. Weaver found out what had happened, when he dropped by the house to look in on her. They were eating lunch together with the TV on in the background, when the news came on. The image of the crashing helicarriers was forever burned into his memories.

The Hydra Conspiracy still haunted him. It would never stop haunting him. All this time, Weaver had thought he was on the right side, only to discover just how wrong he had been. He saw people he liked and trusted, fellow agents he’d fought alongside and enjoyed drinks with, being hauled away in handcuffs, endless testimonies about just how deep the conspiracy went, how badly he’d screwed up. Scores of innocent people, men, women, and children, had died, so many that they would likely never know the full body count.

Aside from the military backup and biohazard cleaners, there were five SHIELD agents walking the halls: him, Ilene Statler, Oliver Moyers, Jane Hopper, and Matt Wendell.

“Guys?” Agent Moyers’s voice came on over the radio. “Y-You guys need to come see this. Meet me in the third hall, room A.”

His voice was shaking. Weaver knew something was up. Moyers used to be part of JSOC, had operated in some of the worst war zones around. Weaver had seen him remain calm, even as bullets were flying so close to his cheeks, he could feel the warm path of air as they whizzed by.

They all gathered in Room 3A, him, Statler, Moyers, Hopper, and Wendell. From the looks of things, this room had been some kind of lab. Smashed computers, microscopes, and what looked to be an MRI table.

In the center of the room, there was a chair, a gleaming creation of steel and hydraulics, the crown and headpiece ready to do its grim work. There were fingernail marks on the arms. The whole thing smelt of blood and sweat. Weaver could already hear the phantom screams of its victims.

No one had to say anything. They all knew what this chair was and what it represented.

“I thought they’d cleaned up all the bases where the Winter Soldier was kept,” Wendell said.

“Yeah, well, maybe they missed one,” Hopper said.

It was possible. After all, they were still combing through Hydra bases after so many years. They would probably be reading, decoding, and digitizing records for even longer. Weaver made sure to note the chair in his report.

“Did you hear that?” Moyers gestured towards a blank wall. As they strained their ears, it wasn’t long before they heard it as well, a tentative tapping coming from inside.

Ilene frowned. “Is that the ‘Shave and a Haircut’ pattern?”

“‘s probably not some computer making that noise,” Jane said.

“No,” Wendell’s face paled as he studied the wall with his heat vision goggles, “there are definitely people in there, two of them.”

Jane grabbed a stool that had been left lying around. She held it in her hands, ready to swing it. “All right, y’all better step aside and give me some room.”

Moyers ran in front of her. “Are you crazy?! We don’t know what booby traps or whatever could be back there.”

“Agreed,” Weaver said. He crossed his arms and studied the smooth beige surface, looking for a weak point. Meanwhile, the tapping continued.

After reading through some of the files lying around, they finally managed to slide open the door to the small room. There, standing in the dark, blinking their eyes slowly in confusion, was a young boy and girl. 

“Jesus…” Ilene murmured.

Their appearance reminded Weaver of an illustration from Dickens’s _A Christmas Carol_ , the part where the Ghost of Christmas Present lifted his robes to reveal a pair of emaciated, children clad in rags, a girl named Want and a boy named Ignorance, visual metaphors of the societal ills born of poverty.

Ilene approached the two. She bent down to better match their height. “Hi, my name is Ilene,” she spoke softly. “These are some of my friends, Jane, Matt, Oliver, and Ellis. Do you want to give me your names?”

Neither child said a word. The boy, who seemed a bit older than the girl, studied them in stony silence; the only sign of any emotion were his eyes which looked from face to face. He was a little curious, but afraid. He wrapped his arms around the little girl next to him.

The girl’s terror was obvious. She whimpered, shaking like a sapling caught in a storm. She pursed her lips together until they turned white from the strain. Her small hands cradled a worn, dirty sock that she stroked like a baby.

There were no words to be found. They knew about Hydra’s history of abducting kids, raising them inside their brutal academies, and using them as guinea pigs, so finding signs of child abuse no longer shocked them. Nearly every raid on one of Hydra’s academies resulted in finding mass graves of children who died or tried to escape. Still, something about all this felt off, though Weaver couldn’t give a clear reason why. He radioed the discovery of the children and proceeded to make arrangements.

While he was on the phone, Matt asked them questions, spitting them out in close succession. “How long have you been here? Can you give us any information about what the adults here were doing? Did they hurt you? What did they do?”

The two children frowned in confusion, clinging tightly to each other.

“Matt,” Oliver said, “I think you’re scaring them. They’re kids. They might not know anything.”

Weaver finished his conversation and turned to his crew.

Jane shrugged, running a hard through her closely-cropped hair. “Well, fearless leader, what would you have us do?”

“As you can probably guess, these kids have set off a flurry of phone calls. Long story short, tomorrow morning, they’ll send someone from SHIELD’s Children of Hydra project, but until then, we’re on babysitting duty. SHIELD will cover the cost of whatever supplies we may need and barring the unforeseen, we will leave and return to the States at the already scheduled departure time.” Weaver took a deep breath. “Matt, I want you and Jane to stay here and continue to coordinate the cleanup. Oliver, you can drive me, Ilene, and the kids to the hotel room. We’ll work things out from there.” He winced, popped the cap off a bottle of Maalox, and took a swig. His insides were on fire. He shrugged and turned to Ilene. “Well, let’s get moving.”

It took longer than they thought it would to load the kids into the vehicle. Then again, they should have known better; kids that had been abused, generally don’t respond well to being touched.

The girl shrieked like she had touched a hot stove. Her words poured out, hot and fast, forcing them to strain their ears to understand her.

“There’s no lightning in the floor, right? There’s no lightning in the floor?!” Her words slammed into each other, making it hard to discern where one sentence began or ended.

Ilene spoke softly. “It’s okay. It’s safe. If there was lightning in the floor, me and Weaver here wouldn’t be able to stand on it.”

The girl tilted her head in confusion. Her first step was tentative with her sticking out a foot first to test the floor. When it didn’t shock her, she trotted to the door and paused, arms behind her back, her legs ramrod straight.

The boy’s face remained a mask of stone-cold hostility. When Weaver reached for him, he swung his fist at him.

Weaver easily dodged it. He wouldn’t be much of a SHIELD agent if he couldn’t handle a punch from an emaciated child.

Once he saw that the little girl had made it safely to the other side of the room, the boy stepped out of the alcove. His steps were slow and deliberate, but not for the same reason as the girl. He had a noticeable limp, choosing to favor his right leg.

The children followed them down the halls. The only sound heard, was their footfalls against the cold tile. Weaver had never seen any children ever be so quiet. When they opened the door and stepped outside, the little girl started shrieking.

“Too bright! It’s too bright! ‘S too bright!” As she sobbed, the little girl buried her face against Ilene’s jeans.

Weaver shook his head. Christ, how long had these kids lived like that, tucked away into some far alcove.

Ilene tried to reassure her. “I know it’s very bright out, but it’s much less bright inside the van, I promise you.”

When that didn’t work, Weaver walked to the van and picked up the big, fancy, flowery hat he had bought as an anniversary present for his wife. When he placed it on her head, the little girl’s tears stopped. “Here,” he said, “a little protection from the sun.”

The two children walked to the car. Oliver already had it running.

After the little girl took her seat, she played with the hat constantly, spinning it on her head, her small hands running over the brim and playing with the silk flowers.

Weaver made a note to pick up a new present for his wife.

The drive was entirely uneventful. The children sat in silence. As for the adults, Weaver guessed they felt about the same as he did. The discovery at the base had rattled all of them. Weaver couldn’t shake the feeling that they had stumbled onto the disgusting, rotting toenail of the monster, one too fierce and terrible to behold in its full form.

Today’s safe house, was a hotel room. The kids had lucked out. In the past, Weaver had stayed in safe houses that were tar-paper shacks, had slept in caves when needed; he can’t say he objected too strongly to staying at a luxury hotel. He and Ilene picked up the keys, found their rooms, and opened the door.

The two children remained silent, eyes studying the room, running their hands over the carpet and bedding.

Weaver knew his two boys would be over the moon to stay in a hotel room. They would be tearing up the place, bouncing on the beds, and playing “The Floor’s Made Of Lava.” Sometimes he wondered if they enjoyed the hotel room more than the actual place where they came to vacation. They were also regular chatterboxes who talked endlessly about PAW Patrol and The Iron Man Power Hour. These kids and their quietness…It felt like an appalling crime.

Weaver swallowed. “I’m going to make a supply run, get some things for the kids. Can you order some dinner and keep an eye on them while I’m gone.”

Ilene nodded. Weaver left.

They needed supplies, but honestly, Weaver just needed to get away from everyone for a bit and do some thinking.

His sons, Nicolas and James, had effectively hijacked his brain. Weaver knew the old yarn about how having a child changes you, but until they entered the world, he hadn’t understood just what that meant. It did change everything about him, but somehow, even that phrase didn’t feel sufficiently adequate to describe the effect they’d had on his life.

Nicolas and James were always on his mind, but the discovery of the children at the base, had only amplified it. He remembered those two frightened, half-starved children at the hotel. God, he didn’t know what he’d do if anyone ever treated his boys like that. Knowing that there was a bone pit at the base only made matters worse.

The job took its toll. No matter how inured Weaver had become to what he witnessed as a SHIELD agent, the things he saw, still burrowed under his skin at times. In the wake of the reveal, it had only become worse.

It had been his dream to join SHIELD. Like so many others, Weaver had grown up idolizing Captain America, collecting the comics, playing Captain America on the playground using his backpack as a shield, and watching the movies, until the cassettes practically turned into dust in the VCR. He had seen every episode of the 90s animated series “Captain America & His Howling Commandos” several times and could practically recite all the dialogue from some of his favorite episodes from memory. 

So naturally, he wanted to join the organization that was supposed to be carrying on the Captain’s legacy. Weaver worked his ass off, took the necessary classes in college, joined the SEALs, and did whatever he could to make himself as good a candidate as he could. The day he received his letter stating that he had passed the final round of auditions and was now officially a part of SHIELD, was one of the happiest days of his life, beaten only by the birth of his sons and his marriage to Jessica. Weaver worked hard, often putting in an insane amount of hours for the job, and he never regretted it, because he believed in SHIELD and what it represented.

Then Captain America blew up the helicarriers, Black Widow did a massive file dump, and Weaver learned just how wrong he had been.

Weaver wanted to clean out the entire kids section of the department store, as though giving the children as many things as possible, would erase the harm done to them. Where were these kids’ parents? How could they let this happen to their children?

He soon realized a more accurate question was, “Who were their parents?” Images of all those smashed Petri dishes containing embryos came to mind. Hydra had created these embryos for a reason, and it probably wasn’t to start an IVF clinic.

Weaver managed to restrain himself and didn’t buy out the entire section. He bought shampoo, combs, and brushes for their hair, along with toothbrushes and toothpastes. He debated buying them shoes, but soon realized he didn’t know their sizes, so he settled on slippers instead. He grabbed some coats and threw them into the cart.

Of course, he couldn’t leave without buying them some toys. He grabbed a rag doll for the girl and a teddy bear for the boy. At the last minute, Weaver put some drawing pads and boxes of crayons into the cart. Once everything had been paid for, he returned to the hotel.

From the looks of things, while he was gone, Ilene had called every food delivery service within the city limits. Even before he opened the door, the aroma was overwhelming.

Ilene had spread the various containers and boxes around her as best as she could. Pizzas, sodas, Chinese takeout, Thai, Korean BBQ, nearly the entire cuisine of Southeast Asia was represented, though for those interested in American food, she also had sacks of burgers, buckets of fried chicken, French Fries, and BBQ brisket. All this along with various sauces and candies.

Ilene studied all this with the air of a queen surveying her kingdom, barely shaken by Weaver’s presence. She bit into a slice of pepperoni pizza that she had dipped in ranch and sprinkled with M&Ms., groaning with pleasure. “Gods, this place is like prime location when it comes to food—all this grease, salt, and sugar, just ripe for the taking.”

The TV had been turned on and had been set to a cartoon, _Moon Girl,_ from the looks of things.

Weaver never knew how Ilene managed to make it to her thirties with the eating habits of a sugar-high thirteen-year-old turned loose with her daddy’s plastic. It was hard for Weaver to reconcile the tough-as-nails crackshot version of Ilene he served with in the field, with the Ilene, who loved junk food, cartoons, stuffed animals, and face-painting as much as many seven-year-olds.

The two children stood in a corner, holding each other tight, food smeared around their mouths.

“So how have they been?” Weaver asked.

Ilene shrugged. “‘Bout the same. I brought here, put some food in them, turned on some cartoons. Don’t know what you were expecting, but neither’s really done or said much of anything.”

“It’s okay.” He walked over to the children. “Um, hey,” Weaver said. “I went out and bought you some things.” He presented them with their clothing, toys, and pads of paper.

The little girl hugged her rag doll tight, cradling it much in the same way she had cradled her sock. She placed them gingerly on the hotel bed.

The boy held the bear tentatively, part of him acting like he wanted to wrap his arms around it, while another…it was clear he had been hurt before and wasn’t entirely sure whether or not this was a trap. He seemed much more interested in the paper and crayons. He tried to remain stone-faced, but his quivering limbs gave him away.

Weaver smiled. He spoke carefully. “It’s okay. Those are for you. If you want to draw, there’s a desk over there.”

The boy’s face lit up. He took out a piece of paper and some crayons and set to work.

The girl squealed with glee as she sat beside him. “Wanna draw, wanna draw,” she said.

Weaver raised his hands. “Hey, hey, we’re inside, so we’ve gotta keep our voices down.

The two children set to work. Neither said anything to each other as they drew; the only sounds they made, came from their crayons as they scribbled across the pages.

Their silence still bothered him, though it was nice to see them behaving a little like children.

He guessed it made sense that they wouldn’t draw the traditional childhood stuff like houses and stick figures. They hadn’t ever known comfort and safety, so they wouldn’t draw warm and cozy scenes.

The little girl’s drawing didn’t seem to depict anything in particular. There were no solid objects or people of any kind, just a world of shapes and shadows. Despite the colors available to her, she stuck to various shades of blue and grey, swimming in a sea of black. There was no light in this world and there had probably never been.

The boy, however, favored the colors red, orange, brown, and yellow. His tongue was stuck partway out of his mouth, as he poured his intensity into his work. He paused for a moment to study his drawing.

The boy had drawn a tree, a massive beast of one, whose limbs hung down so low, they practically demanded to be climbed. It was clearly a depiction of it in Fall, as the riot of colors made it clear.

Weaver was about to compliment the boy on his work, when suddenly, the child uttered a cry of despair.

“No, no, no!” he said as he tore the drawing to shreds.

The boy needed to calm down before the other guests complained, but Weaver wasn’t sure what to do. If it was one of his boys, Weaver would just yell at them to stop, hug them, or shut them in a room until they quieted down. But this child had been deeply traumatized and didn’t like being touched, leaving Weaver unsure what to do.

“Hey, hey,” Ilene spoke softly, as she wrapped the boy in one of the coats Weaver had purchased.

The boy started to calm down.

“It’s okay. It doesn’t have to be perfect,” she said.

The boy shook his head, his brown bangs covering his face. “I have to get it right. If I don’t, I won’t remember it right, and I won’t be able to find Nana.”

“We’ll be able to find her, I promise,” Ilene said.

The boy calmed down a little, wrapping himself even more.

It seemed like a bad idea, Ilene telling him that, letting the boy get his hopes up. What if she was dead or couldn’t be found? Still, it did quiet him down, and because of that, Weaver was willing to let it slide. He and his squad only had to take care of the children until tomorrow morning. Then the Children of Hydra project would take over from there. Let them deal with the Nana problem.

The rest of the squad, Hopper, Moyers, and Wendell soon joined them at hotel. They feasted on the food Ilene had ordered, but the mood was quieter than usual. Missions involving children always shook everyone up, and this one had more than others. Weaver guessed that everyone felt the same way he did. Something terrible had been going on at the base, beyond Hydra’s usual brand of brutality. They just didn’t know what. Since, they couldn’t talk about the mission with the kids in the room, everyone nervously shuffled around the matter.

Weaver spent the rest of the evening, babysitting the kids and conferring with his superiors via email or telephone. God, how many people he talked to…with every phone call, he hoped someone had found something and would finally explain what the hell was going on, but that never happened. He winced and took a swig of Maalox, reminding himself to pick up another bottle soon.

In the wake of the crash, anyone who had ever worked for SHIELD in any capacity, even just janitorial scut work, fell under suspicion and had to endure what felt like endless investigations. Weaver cooperated fully, giving his prints and DNA, turning over any records they asked for, and answering endless questions. He did all this without any hesitation, because he had nothing to hide. The committee set up to investigate SHIELD employees, soon realized he was innocent and closed the book on him pretty quick.

But normalcy had forever been shattered. His life would never be how it was, before the crash.

While he had nothing to hide, the same wasn’t true for many of his coworkers. The months following the crash, the news was an endless parade of Hydra infiltrators, his colleagues, being dragged away in handcuffs.

Most of these former colleagues were rotting in maximum security prisons all around the world. Weaver probably could, if he wanted to, write or visit them, but he didn’t. As much as he wanted to know whether there had ever been any truth in their friendships, deep down, Weaver knew answers wouldn’t help.

After the crash and the investigations that followed, many SHIELD employees opted to resign. Even if the investigations proved they were clean, after everything they had learned, many employees decided to jump ship and disassociate themselves from SHIELD as much as possible. The infiltration had left its taint everywhere, forever damaging the geopolitical landscape, and not even good people were spared.

When it came to the kids, Weaver and his squad soon realized they had screwed up. They had forgotten about what happened when kids who had subsisted on a meager, restricted diet, suddenly had their bodies flooded with calories. As a result, much of the evening was spent shepherding pukey kids to and from the bathroom.

Weaver shook his head. How could he have made such an elementary mistake? He soon realized why; he had been distracted.

His wife, Jessica, had been on him lately when it came to his job. To be fair, she had a point. He had promised her that he would leave the field and take a desk job. That was what most SHIELD agents did once they started having kids... But seeing the helicarriers crash, finding out just how wrong he’d been about the organization he worked, destroyed him. Weaver couldn’t stop thinking about all the deaths that had happened, not just fellow agents and government officials, but ordinary men, women, and children who were murdered, because he had been blind to the monster that had slithered its way into the ranks. He stayed as an act of penance for all the people who couldn’t.

The last time Weaver had talked to his wife, it was dark out. The boys were asleep down the hall. The tinny sound of their sleep friend, a plastic turtle lamp that lit up and played soothing music. Right now, it was playing the tune “Imagine” by John Lennon.

Weaver didn’t know how it worked, why he could remember a smattering of small details, like his wife’s chipped lavender toenail polish, the way her hands played with the loose threads of her ratty bathrobe, but not the important stuff that mattered. He knows that he and Jessica had had a fight about something, but couldn’t remember what it had been about. He did remember the conversation they had afterwards.

“Dammit…” His wife sighed. “I’ve become a cliché, haven’t I? Y’know when you took this job, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t be one of those women who gripe about their husband always being away because of their high stress job with crazy hours, yet here we are.”

“Jessica, I’m so sorry…” His voice choked on her name.

“I know you are,” she said. “It still doesn’t change the fact you being away all the time and the everything with SHIELD…I just don’t know how much longer I can do this, Ellis.”

Weaver opened her mouth to speak, but Jessica raised her arm and continued.

“I know I sound all ‘woe is me,’ but I’m also concerned about what this job is doing to you.” She paused. “I found the results of your latest physical, Ellis. Your blood pressure is through the roof and your acid reflux has done a number on your esophagus. This job is destroying you even more than what it’s doing to me and the boys.”

“Jessica..” Weaver looked for more words, but couldn’t find any.

Jessica continued, massaging her temples as she spoke. “Ellis, I don’t want to divorce or bury you, but I just can’t go on like this. Get a desk job with SHIELD or some other organization. We’ve got enough saved up that it won’t hurt us, if you take a brief hit when it comes to your salary. Even if it’s not a brief hit, we’ll make things work. I’ll move into a smaller house if it means me and the boys get to see you more.”

She took his hand, rubbing her fingers over his knuckles. “Hydra’s actions are on Hydra. You didn’t knowingly or intentionally do anything on their behalf. You did your job and saved so many lives. Let Hydra pay for Hydra’s crimes. Torturing yourself is not going to fix or undo any of their crimes.”

Weaver knew she was right, but SHIELD had been a part of his life for so long, he didn’t know what he’d do with himself.

The rest of the evening was a dull affair. He, Ilene, Hopper, Moyers, and Wendell took turns watching the kids. They herded them to and from the bathroom when they became sick and had them watch cartoons and color.

When the little girl’s eyes started to droop, Weaver realized it was time to wrap things up. “C’mon, you two need to get washed up.”

The boy silently walked to the bathroom, dragging his bad leg behind him. His face revealed nothing. He ran the water, undressed, scrubbed himself pink, washed his hair, before dressing himself once more. When he was done, he left the bathroom, sat on the carpet, and primly folded his hands.

His squad had already noticed the rather striking resemblance the boy bore to Bucky Barnes aka the Winter Soldier. Now that some of the grime had been scrubbed away from his hair and skin, the resemblance was so damn uncanny, the breath left Weaver’s lungs. He found himself involuntarily making the sign of the cross.

Until the crash of the helicarriers, Weaver hadn’t given much thought to the Winter Soldier’s existence. Others had debated theories, wondering if he actually existed, whether the Winter Soldier was one person or if it was the name of a super secret special forces division. There was also speculation that maybe the Winter Soldier, was just a title passed from one person to the next, the new guy assuming the title, after the previous one had died or retired, like some kind of Dread Pirate Roberts shit.

Weaver never paid much attention to these rumors. Maybe the Winter Soldier existed, maybe he didn’t. As far as he was concerned, there were enough villains that they knew for a fact, existed. In his years in the military and SHIELD, Weaver knew that one of the major tools of war was the ability to bullshit. Claim to be stronger than what they actually were to stave off an attack. Claim to be weaker than they actually were to lure them into a trap. Convince them that the attack or invasion will take place at this time or location, instead of this other place.

The list went on and on. Bullshitting had a long and storied history when it came to war. As he result, Weaver suspected that the stories about the Winter Soldier were about 90% hype/bullshit with maybe about 10% truth mixed in. As far as Weaver was concerned, if the Winter Soldier showed up while he was on a mission, he’d deal with it, but until then, he had other issues to deal with.

Still, of all the theories circulating about the Winter Soldier, no one had guessed James Buchanan Barnes. When it came to suspects, most would generally rule out a guy who was presumed dead after falling several feet from a speeding train into the fucking Alps some 70 years ago.

The little girl did not go peacefully to her bath. Her face turned dark purplish red, as she flailed and begged. “No, please! I will be good! I will obey! I will do as I am told!”

Weaver and the rest of squad tried to reassure her, but they had little impact on the girl’s terror.

Only when the boy spoke, did she finally calm down. “Eight, it’s okay. This is the good water, not the bad kind.

The girl’s sobs lessened. Her red, puffy face started to show some signs of calm. “Y-You mean there’s no l-lightning in it?”

“There isn’t.”

The girl calmed down, though her limbs still shook. Once she had dipped her toe in the water and saw that nothing bad happened, she was much more agreeable about taking her bath.

Weaver turned his attentions back to the boy who was currently running his hands on the carpet fibers. “Eight?!”

The boy shrugged clearly confused as to why Weaver was so shocked by all this. “She’s Eight and I’m Seven.” He spoke with the careful manner of a teacher trying to explain a concept to a particularly stubborn child.

“Christ…” Weaver shook his head, wondering if it would ever stop, if the volley of horrors he witnessed at his job would ever stop piling on each other. There had to be a moment where it ceased to shock as badly as it had before. At the same time, he feared the day it would.

The girl emerged from the bathroom, holding her head high, her blue eyes shining with joy. The grime had been cleared away, revealing a long golden mane that settled just passed her shoulders. She was still entirely too thin, but clearing away the grime had done much to improve her appearance. She seemed to know how pretty she looked, wouldn’t stop beaming from ear to ear. “See my hair? See my hair?” She insisted on showing it off to every member of the squad who all made sure to compliment her on it.Even the boy seemed to share a little of the excitement, his stone-like face briefly revealing a grin.

Looking at her, Weaver had similar feelings as he had had about the boy. The resemblance she bore to Captain America…it wasn’t as strong as the boy’s resemblance to Bucky Barnes, but it was almost uncanny. Weaver didn’t know what any of this meant. He tried not to think about it and focus on the task at hand. All he and his crew had to do, was care for them until tomorrow morning. Then the Children of Hydra project would take over, and all this would be someone else’s problem.

It was a bit callous of him, but Weaver had learned again and again that the only way to survive this job was to take care of his own tasks, and let others take care of theirs. Someone higher up would take all the evidence they had gathered and work out the bigger picture stuff, and the Children of Hydra project would find the kids homes. 

Getting them to bed took longer than they thought. They couldn’t get the children to lay down to sleep; they wouldn’t lie on beds or the couch. Eventually, the children curled up into little balls on the carpets and soon fell fast asleep. They slept huddled, together like kittens to stay warm.

Hopper shrugged. “‘s bit unconventional, but we got them to bed.”

They nodded and proceeded to go to their separate rooms and settle in.

Weaver should have known it was too good to be true. The kids kept waking up in the night, fussing over nightmares. The girl’s were centered around lightning and electricity, but the boy’s were harder to discern. He more or less shut down as soon as someone approached him.

After a while, Weaver came to welcome these disruptions. Being awake felt so much easier than going to sleep, dealing with the bizarre dreams that afflicted him.

What he dreamed about, were faces or rather, the lack of them. Weaver would dream about returning home, ready to greet his wife and sons, only for them to not have any faces, their beige expanses, smooth as the inside of shells on the beach. They would talk to him, but their words were gibberish. When he begged them to explain themselves, he would discover he no longer had a face or a voice.

He also dreamt about going for a walk, only to discover himself crumbling into porcelain dust soon scattered by the wind.

Weaver didn’t know what any of these dreams meant and didn’t care. He just wanted them to stop.

At some point, he must have fallen asleep. When he woke up, something was rattling at the door. He opened it.

Moyers stood there, clad in what were clearly his gym clothes. By his side, was the young boy who carried a grocery bag full of leftovers from last night.

Moyers sighed. “I was working out and saw this little man making a run for it. Got ‘em before the made it outside.” He shook his head, thick, black curls getting in his eyes. “I asked him where he was going. Kid kept talking about California and his nana. Don’t ask me what the hell that means.”

The boy’s face remained expressionless, revealing no signs of remorse or fear of punishment. In a situation like this, Weaver knew his boys would be fussing and making all kinds of noises, apologizing and begging for forgiveness, each one blaming the other for whatever had happened.

Weaver bent down to the boy’s height. “I know you want to go to California and find your nana, but California is thousands of miles and a whole ocean away. There’s no way you could walk there. But we will find your nana, I promise.”

He couldn’t tell if his words had made any impact on the boy. Still, the kid entered the room without complaint and soon, went to the breakfast buffet downstairs without complaint.

Weaver knew he had done what he had mentally chewed-out Ilene for; he made promises he has no idea whether he could keep them. But really what was he supposed to tell him?

They took the children to the complimentary breakfast and spent the rest of the morning, just having them watch cartoons and color. Wendell showed them how to fold pieces of paper into cranes and flowers, which impressed them both.

When the SHIELD vehicle arrived at noon to pick up the children, everyone was relieved. Caring for these children had worn everyone down on a psychological level none of them thought possible.

Weaver’s heart ached as the children climbed into the vehicle, carrying their few possessions with them, all of which were stuff he and his crew had given them. He couldn’t stop thinking about his own boys back home, what he’d do if anyone ever hurt them.

He hoped for the best, hoped that the Children of Hydra project would track down their parents or some relatives who would give them a good home. If they didn’t have a single relative to their name, then he begged God to let them wind up in the hands of someone who would love them to pieces. Let them know as much happiness as they can after living through such appalling misery. He had to hope because any other possibilities were too grim to contemplate.

Once the vehicle had sped away, he and his crew went back to the room to pack everything up. In a few hours, they would be returning to the States. Weaver had already made his decision. He would go home, hug his wife and kids as hard as he could, then he would pick up the phone and ask SHIELD for a desk job. If he couldn’t get one with SHIELD, he would give his two weeks’ notice and look for work elsewhere. The family waiting for him mattered so much more.

Weaver was going home.

Eight watched the countryside turn into a blur as they sped away. She didn’t know what was happening. She still tasted the strange food on her lips and couldn’t stop staring at the bright colors of her new clothes. She had never had any that looked so nice. She stroked her rag doll’s hair.

Eight still didn’t fully understand where they were going, or how much longer she would have these nice clothes and her doll. Maybe they would snatch it from her hands as soon as she arrived, or maybe she’d only lose them if she was bad. Eight had long learned to enjoy things while she had them.

Still, something sat uneasily in her stomach. She turned towards Seven, speaking softly in case someone bad was listening. “You said if they killed me, you’d kill them. Is that going to still be true at the new place?”

“Yes.” His voice was barely audible over the sounds of the road. “It’s true at any place.”

With that, Eight felt a little better about where she was going. Still, she hoped they let her keep her stuff.

Seven remained silent as these strangers dragged him from one place to another.so many adults kept coming up to him, asking him questions he barely understood. They also took him to doctors where he was given shots.

He got through all this by thinking about Nana. She was out there somewhere, and he was going to find her. Nana hadn’t stopped looking for him—she never would—but he needed to do his part.

Seven didn’t think that Nana would object to Eight living with them, but he should probably ask first. If Nana couldn’t take care of Eight, he would make sure he found someone for her. Maybe Jess could take her in.

Whatever happened, he would find Nana. These adults were being very nice to them, but they weren’t Nana. They wouldn’t know anything about the cabin in the woods where he’d grown up, or about traveling on the river. And they probably couldn’t throw birthdays as well as she could, read his books the right way, or tell stories the way she could.

Still, Seven wouldn’t leave now. California was too far away, and there were too many eyes on him. He would have to be careful. The last time he made a run for it, the adults caught him and broke one of his legs. The days that followed, felt like an eternity of agony. It was like he was a being made entirely of pain—there had been nothing before the pain and would be nothing afterwards. He burned with fever, his sweat soaking his bed sheets.

During all this, only visions of Nana got him through. He would hear her voice, feel her hands stroking his hair.

Nana had always helped him. Seven owed it to her to do whatever he could to help her. Though, first he had to find her.

In the wake of the reveal, SHIELD, working hand in hand with the UN and innumerable other government organizations across the globe, established several groups to deal with the aftermath. What it really amounted to, was cleanup, decoding Hydra documents, processing materials recovered from their bases, and planning prosecutions of former members. The Hydra infiltration had existed and spread to nearly every level of law enforcement and government around the world, over a span of time greater than half a century, meaning that everyone working on these projects knew that this work would take decades.

The goal was to settle once and for all which crimes/major events in history were orchestrated by Hydra and which were the products of random chance. At times, it could be difficult to tell. Too often, freakish occurrences had far-reaching effects that wouldn’t be fully known for decades. History often hinged on the most bizarre coincidences, some idiot having a stroke of luck at the worst possible moment. Some punk teenager assassinates the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, setting in motion a series of events that bring about WWI,WWII, and nearly every major historical event of the twentieth century. They would probably never know anything for certain, but the people involved were bound and determined to solve as many mysteries as they could.

The work was dull and tedious. A veritable army of investigators spent hours combing through the massive Hydra file dump and cataloging whatever information could be found. It was a sea of internal documents, reports, memos, invoices, financial records. Many of these files were encrypted and had to be carefully translated, which made the work all the more arduous. Hydra utilized several different ciphers and means of encryption over the course of their history, changing them frequently.

The Children of Hydra project dealt with exactly what was on the tin. Hydra needed recruits for their organization. Children were easy to indoctrinate, and if they made it through Hydra’s hellish training, their loyalty was assured. Where they wound up working in the organization, depended on their talents. Soldiers underwent military training, while scientists had almost unlimited resources to perform their research. Some of these children were the offspring of Hydra members, but the organization couldn’t operate on those alone. As a result, stealing children provided a major source of recruits.

Hydra gained children in a wide variety of ways. There were orphanages, foster systems, and group homes filled to the brim with children needing homes and administrators were willing to hand over a few kids in exchange for bribes. They had social workers who worked in the communities, often among the indigent, who collected information on single mothers and impoverished families, people on the fringes of society who lacked the resources needed to fight back. Some of these families were willing to hand over their kids in exchange for a financial payout, but most weren’t, forcing Hydra to resort to a wide variety of tactics.

False charities were common. A Hydra employee would show up under the guise of a charity worker and offer to pay for necessary medical care for one of a targeted family’s children. Then they would return later and tell the family that said children had died, but don’t worry, they had already taken care of the burial for them. Another strategy often used, especially in third world countries, was to claim that their children were going to be sent to schools in America to get an education. The families were led to believe that they would regularly receive letters and correspondence with their children. They didn’t know that when they signed the paperwork, they had effectively surrendered their rights to their children. Hydra employed several forgers who crafted false papers and birth certificates to conceal the origins of these children.

In the wake of the reveal, so many relatives, mothers, fathers, and siblings thronged whatever police stations or government buildings they could, carry photos, blankets, or whatever they had left of their missing child. So many of them had known something was wrong, had always been suspicious regarding their child’s fate; the file dump served as a terrible vindication of what they had always suspected. And of course, they overwhelmingly wanted their children back. No matter how many decades had passed, they never forgot about the child they’d lost, even if they had had other children in the ensuing years.

Of course, too often, these people received bad news. Hydra’s primary concern was to produce loyal soldiers, not nurture young minds. As a result, abuse ran rampant, sexual assault, regular beatings, along with neglect. Any and all privileges the children enjoyed, were tied to how well they had performed in class or training. Have a bad day and the instructors would limit the amount of food received. Group punishments were also the norm: if one student screwed up, all were assigned extra work or had privileges taken away. As a result, there were massive bone pits outside Hydra’s academies, full of the remains of children, all of whom bore the telltale marks of abuse.

Hydra’s academies had all been raided and every student rescued, so the workload wasn’t quite as heavy as it had been in the months and days following the file dump. But that didn’t mean that they were completely out of work.

Much of it took place in labs and involved DNA testing. All those TV shows about CSIs or other depictions of forensic science made it look easy—just pop it into the computer and it’ll have pulled up the results in the time it takes someone to microwave a burrito—but actually it was tedious work that demanded long fruitless hours and involved a lot of waiting.

None of the employees had any reason to believe that this wouldn’t be the same. They would do their tests, then find the kids some places to live. Then life went on.

This soon became moot once the DNA results came back.

“Oh you have got to be kidding me.” These words uttered by Doris, one of the older technicians, seemed to sum it all up for everyone.

Now, this mission had become a different one entirely, beyond the bounds of the project. One of the technicians picked up the phone and called their higher-ups. From there, a massive game of phone tag unfolded throughout all levels of SHIELD.


	2. Revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and Steve receive the shocking news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we cut to our boys, Steve and Bucky. Forgive me, I wanted to play around in the first chapter.
> 
> Trigger Warnings for mentions of abuse and victim self-blame. It’s generally not graphic—more implied than anything else—but I thought I should give a heads up.

Seeing the sun, feeling its warmth on his skin…it helped a little. It made his demons feel like they were farther away, made it easier for Bucky to believe that Hydra and his assorted handlers, really were all dead and couldn’t hurt him anymore. When he was the Winter Soldier, the world was always cold and dark, whether he was in Siberia or the tropics.  
If it was up to Bucky, he would live in nothing but sunshine and never know darkness ever again. But that probably wasn’t possible, unless he lived on an asteroid like the title character of _The Little Prince._ Bucky understood completely why someone might spend a day watching as many sunrises as possible.   
The goats were already bleating, demanding their breakfast. Becca, the dog Shuri had given him, was doing her job, making sure everyone stayed in line. Becca was an Anatolian Shepherd mix, a massive beast of a dog, weighing a hundred pounds, tall enough that when sitting, her head was close to reaching Bucky’s navel.  
As a shepherd dog, wrangling in goats and keeping an eye out for predators, was second nature for her. Sometimes Bucky felt a little guilty because Becca practically did all the work for him. She was fierce in defense of the herd, but also had a motherly nature about her. Without him ever directly ordering her, he and Becca seemed to have reached an understanding. Most of the time, she kept to the fields, but whenever He had a nightmare or a panic attack, she was there, ready to offer comfort.  
When Bucky first started working with the goats, his movements were shaky and he eyed the beasts warily.  
Shuri had laughed so hard about it. “Is the world’s deadliest assassin afraid of some goats?”  
He wasn’t, but taking care of livestock wasn’t something he’d had much experience in. Bucky was a city boy, so this was all new to him. He learned quickly and now, most of the work was automatic to him. He fed, watered, and milked them, checked for signs of illness or injury. He looked over the pregnant ones, checking to see how close they were to whelping. Once this work was finished, Bucky leaned against the side of his hut and sighed.  
Inside the hut, Steve dozed peacefully, his face bearing the sweet blissfulness that only post-coital sleep could bring. Steve would likely be cheesed at him for not waking him, but Bucky just couldn’t do it. Steve was his guest and he’d be a pretty bad host if he dragged him out of bed to deal with livestock.   
T’Challa had offered to host them both in Wakanda, but he and Steve had declined. T’Challa was taking enough of a risk sheltering one international fugitive; he didn’t need another one. He and Steve kept in touch via Skype and email, but occasionally Bucky could talk him into visiting in person. Though it wasn’t like he had to do much to twist Steve’s arm.  
God, finding Steve…No matter what happened, if he had Steve, he would always be home, regardless of where they lived. He could make a home in Antarctica if he had Steve.  
For Bucky, that was the greatest miracle of the twenty-first century, he and Steve being able to be in love, hug and kiss like any straight couple, never having to hide how much they loved each other while out in public, never having to take girls out to keep up appearances or communicate via looks and nods while out in public.   
He had known since after Steve rescued him at Azzano that there was nothing wrong with what they felt towards each other, but to have society as a whole affirm it and not have to fear winding up in jail or the nuthouse…Bucky could only dream of how valuable all this information would have been to him and Steve, back when they were a couple of teenagers nervously making out in Steve’s bedroom while his mother was at work.  
“Buck…” Steve stumbled towards him, still in his pajamas, his hair sticking up all over the place. “Shoulda woke me,” he murmured.  
“You looked so peaceful. I couldn’t bring myself to disturb you.”  
Steve opened his mouth, clearly ready to voice some objections, but Bucky spoke first. “Look, if you want something to do, you can go make breakfast. I haven’t gotten to that yet.”  
Steve went to where he kept the pots and pans and started rummaging around.   
Bucky sighed. No matter what happened, certain things stayed the same like how it was often easier to find something for Steve to do, than try to explain over and over that he could mostly handle the goats by himself and didn’t need any help.  
The life he had made for himself in Wakanda, was a leisurely one. The goats needed to be looked in on, fed and watered when needed, and Bucky had to keep an eye and ear out for predators, but for the most part, the goats could look after themselves; Bucky could devote his time to reading and studying and playing with the children who visited him.  
Whenever Steve came for a visit, the routine changed a little but not much. He and Steve spent most of their time just being together, lying around, taking care of the goats, talking about anything and everything they wanted to, playing with the children when they came over. On occasion, they might watch a movie or a show, but most of the time, being around each other was joy enough.  
Breakfast was mostly poached eggs, bacon, and biscuits, all washed down with plenty of goat milk. Once the food had been consumed and the dishes washed and put away, he and Steve hung out, just enjoying each other’s presence.  
As rough as it was, being international fugitives, the sad truth was that this was the first time either had had so much leisure time since their early childhood. Growing up in the kind of neighborhood they did, both Steve and Bucky had learned how to hustle from a fairly young age, find ways of making some spending money for themselves, even before the Depression hit.   
He and Steve made money in a wide variety of ways. While there were child labor laws on the book, enforcement was lax; it wasn’t hard to find places willing to pay kids under the table to do some odd jobs. If they looked clean-cut and respectful, often the boss was willing to find something for them to do. In wintertime, sidewalks and steps could be shoveled. And of course, Steve sold his art. He would set up a little stand for himself near the major tourist spots like the Statue of Liberty and offer to draw sketches for the tourists, charging prices depending on the size or how complicated the pictures were, charged extra for color. Neither earned much money through their various efforts, but some money was better than none.  
When they were older, Steve worked for the WPA, while Bucky found work at the docks. It was hard labor, but it paid better than any of the work Bucky had done in the past. It granted him and Steve a little breathing room and enabled them to worry a little less about money.  
Then the war hit and about the only rest either of them ever received, was when they were on ice.  
Deep down, Bucky knows that at some point, both he and Steve are going to be pulled back into conflicts. Fighting is in their blood and they won’t be able to escape it forever. For now, though, they were free.  
It seems strange that this was where they wound up, living in the 21st century, surrounded by toys and gadgets, that not even the writers of those cheap sci-fi pulp novels and comic books they had loved as kids, could dream of. There were times where Bucky wondered if all this was a dream. Maybe it was like something out of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” a dream he was having, while slowly dying in the Alps.   
Maybe he was still with Hydra. Back then, when he wasn’t on ice, odd sensations, scraps of memory, surfaced, rising like ghosts from his shock-treated brain: the crack of a baseball bat, the smell of freshly baked bread. The Soldier had never understood these sensations, but had learned that bringing them up, only led to pain. It was better to enjoy them while they were there and not try to make sense of them.  
Becca barked, a hard, pounding sound that Bucky knew could only mean one thing: possible predators. Bucky drew a quick breath and climbed out of bed, grabbing the vibranium spear Shuri had given him.  
“Buck, what’s going on?” Steve asked.  
“Becca’s seen something. Don’t know what it is, but chances are, it’s some kind of predator. Don’t worry; most of the time you just have to scare it off.”  
“Let me go with you.”  
He shook his head. Bucky should have none better than to expect anything else from Steve. “All right, go grab the rifle and follow close behind.”   
Thankfully, for once, Steve listened to him.  
There was a kind of language when it came to Becca’s barks. Bucky had spent enough time around her and had learned the subtle nuances of them. This was a “There’s a predator!” bark, but he couldn’t tell what it meant. Was it a solitary hunter like a cheetah or a leopard? Or was he dealing with hyenas or lions?  
“So what are we up against?” Steve asked.  
“I’m not sure,” Bucky mumbled. But that wasn’t entirely true. By now, he had figured out what that bark meant. Whoever was coming, was human.  
It couldn’t be Shuri, T’Challa, or the kids he played soccer with. Becca knew them and would never bark at them.   
He wondered if he and Steve’s luck had finally run out. Some form of law enforcement had finally found them.   
In his two years on the run, following the fall of SHIELD, Bucky had held no illusions that he would receive any kind of legal protection. He had done too much and hurt too many people. He was not going to get a fair trial where an impartial jury would decide his fate, the burden of proof would be placed on the prosecution’s shoulders, and he’d have legal counsel representing him. His American citizenship wouldn’t be worth squat. What happened in Germany, had only confirmed what he’d always suspected; he could forget about any legal niceties such as rights and protections. When an organization with laws on the books forbidding shoot-on-sight orders, tried to take him out via a shoot-on-sight order, he understood.  
“Nick?” Steve’s face was scrunched up in confusion.  
It was Nick Fury, strolling through the fields, his body the very picture of calm, like he regularly just casually violated the legal borders of countries that had long closed themselves off to the outside world.  
Bucky’s palms sweated. He gripped his spear tighter.  
He had known that Nick Fury survived his assassination. Steve told him. It relieved him a little to be able to drop one body from his rap sheet, though it probably didn’t matter much.  
As Fury came closer, Bucky studied him, trying to parse out his body language and gauge whether Nick was looking for a fight. It seemed likely he’d be pissed about several attempts on his life, one that culminated in him receiving several bullets and coming damn close to dying.  
Bucky’s field of vision narrowed to a tight square. Even before Hydra dragged his broken body from the Alps, he had been a good soldier. He was a natural athlete, capable of excelling at any sport, if he knew the rules, so he sailed through the physical trials of boot camp. He had been such a damn good shot, he became a sniper. It was stuff like this that made him wonder how much of what Hydra did to him…how much of it was already there? No one, not even Hydra, could create nothing from nothing.  
Bucky hadn’t decided what he was going to do, if it turned out Nick had come looking for a fight. It brought back Siberia, all those memories of the fight with Tony Stark.   
He had had plenty of time to think about that fight, every word that was said, every blow exchanged. There were so many points where Bucky wondered if he could have put a stop to the fight.  
Of course, it had occurred to Bucky that someone might come after him for something he’d done. It was one of the things that remained true about both the 20th and 21st centuries: piss off enough people and eventually someone is gonna come after you. Maybe if Steve hadn’t been there, he would have taken his medicine like a man, to use his father’s words, or found a way to de-escalate the fight.  
But Steve had been there. And while Bucky had no issue with taking his own hits, but he could never let anyone hurt Steve for any reason.  
“At ease,” Nick Fury said, raising a hand. “I didn’t come here to fight, just to talk.”  
Steve relaxed, his demeanor turning calm. Bucky called back his dog but remained coiled and ready.  
Fury shook his head and turned to Steve. “I leave you in charge of the team, while I take care of unfinished business, and everything immediately goes to hell. Remind me to never have you house-sit.”  
Steve lowered his gaze. “I’m sorry.” His lip trembled and his voice rose barely above a murmur. “I’m so sorry.”  
“Well, I’ve kept tabs on everyone, so I know where I can find you if I need you.” Fury’s gaze remained stony and unyielding. “I’m not here on Avengers business anyway. I’m here on a more personal matter. You might want to sit down for this.”  
Bucky led Fury inside his hut, feeling more than just a little chagrined at the state of its interior. If he’d known company was coming, he would have tidied up a little more.   
He settled in next to Steve, making note of all entry and exit points of his hut, where his weapons were stashed. At the same time, Bucky also wondered if he should have offered his guest something to drink. Being a fugitive with a rap sheet spanning decades, wasn’t any excuse to forgo rules of hospitality.  
“Before you ask,” Nick said, “I did clear things with the Wakandan royals first. They know I’m here. So long as I behave myself and not take any souvenirs home with me, they’re willing to let me visit.” He leaned back in his chair, his posture the very model of insouciance.  
Bucky lowered his head, hiding his face behind his hair. He would let Steve do most of the talking with Fury, both because Steve knew him better, but also because Bucky had no idea how to broach a discussion with him. Words didn’t seem adequate and Hallmark didn’t make greeting cards that said, “Sorry I repeatedly shot you while brainwashed.”  
Times like this, Bucky sometimes questioned why he stayed alive. Death would be so much cleaner, than trying to untangle the mess that was his life.  
“Relax, Barnes,” Nick said, “you’re not the first person to shoot me, and you likely won’t be the last. I have that effect on people.”  
Steve spoke. “Why are you here? I’m assuming you didn’t come here to chew me out over the team and make small talk.”  
“I would never come here just for small talk,” Fury said. “As for the team, that’s a discussion for another day. Today, as I’ve said before, is a more personal matter.” He reached inside his coat, pulled out a manilla envelope, and placed it on the table before them. Then he began. “It was a routine job, cleaning up yet another Hydra nest. This one was in some far-off corner of Sokovia. Records referred to the place as Unit 740, though the locals referred to it as the Unit.” Nick reached inside the envelope and pulled out a picture of what Bucky presumed to be Unit 740.   
“Does this place look familiar to you, Sergeant Barnes?” Nick asked.  
“No, it doesn’t.” Bucky drew a deep breath, racking his brain to make sure he had given the right answers. It was true what he told Tony back in Siberia, that he remembered all of the murders and missions he had performed on behalf of Hydra, but there were so many at times, it all had a tendency to run together. Names and faces were easy enough to remember, but dates and times were much harder to recall.   
“Anyway, most of the crew had long fled, so there were a handful still there, all of whom had either bit down on capsule or shot themselves by the time SHIELD agents had reached the place. It seemed like it would be a standard cleanup job, until we found this.” Nick pulled out two more photos and placed them on the table. Then all the air disappeared.  
The last time Bucky felt this sensation, like there was no ground beneath his feet, no reason, logic, or any light to be found in the world at all, it was nearly seventy years ago and he was in Siberia.  
By this point, Zola had put him through so damn much, that whole chunks of his life had disappeared. Brooklyn seemed like a dream, a beautiful lie he had told himself in a futile attempt to convince himself that there was a world outside this one of ice, concrete, and pain. He had stopped reciting his name, rank, and serial number and let the doctors do their work.   
As a result, they had let up on him a little and allowed him a few comforts. They gave him a mattress and a blanket so he no longer had to sleep on the floor. They were letting him have two meals a day and sometimes, they gave him stuff to read, played films and records to aid him in learning his languages. It was horrible of him to think this way, act like they were doing him such a favor by not torturing him as much, but all those ideas regarding God and country had long ceased to mean anything.  
But he still hadn’t become the Asset they wanted. Periodically, he was prone to what they called tantrums. They would be doing something to him and he’d be hit with such a profound sense of rage, a part of him that wouldn’t stop screaming, “This is wrong!” Then he would attack the doctors, the guards, as many people as he could, until they subdued him once more.  
The day it happened…the electricity had stopped. His vision was returning. The usual crew of doctors, technicians, and guards were there. Armin Zola was there and with him, a man who introduced himself as Dr. Fennhoff.  
There were words exchanged, none that Bucky could remember. He heard his voice, heard Zola’s, and Fennhoff’s, but couldn’t remember what any of them said.  
Then Fennhoff showed him a newspaper and from there, everything went to hell. Bucky knew once and for all that no one was coming to save him. And then he broke.  
That was what it felt like, looking at the photo of the brown-haired boy placed on his table. Bucky ran his hand over the photo, trying to find the trick, some way of proving it to be a hoax.  
The likeness wasn’t a hundred percent perfect—Bucky knew he had never been that thin as a child—but it was close enough to be uncanny. His own face stared back at him.   
While Bucky was too stunned to speak or do anything, Steve’s face was turning redder and redder by the minute. His fists were clenched, shoulders squared, muscles coiled.   
Oh, Jesus…Bucky had seen that look before. Whether it was the 40s or 21st century, whether Steve was 95 pounds of Asthma or his veins were loaded up full of super soldier serum, that look meant one thing: trouble.  
Bucky swallowed the lump in his throat and waited.

Steve didn’t like to think of himself as someone who was perpetually pissed off and ready to swing his fists at the world. Then again, it had always been this way, Steve vs. the world.   
He came into the world, undersized and sickly, and from day one, everyone said that he wasn’t going to make it. Steve had spent so many chunks of his childhood laid up with one ailment after another and by the time he turned twenty, he had had the last rites administered to him on five separate occasions.  
There were just so many goddamn illnesses back then, capable of putting a child in a pine box; many of the parents living in his neighborhood, wound up burying a child. So on some level, it made sense that parents would steer their children away from him, since he was sick so much. But just because it made sense, didn’t mean that it didn’t hurt, being treated like a plague rat.  
Before Steve was frozen, Eugenics was considered a perfectly sound science, its tenets accepted by just about all educated people, including the doctors his mother took him to when he was sick. So yeah, the very people who were supposed to help him get better, were also people who believed that his mother and the world would be better off without him in it. Sometimes, the doctors and nurses muttered little remarks along those lines while treating him, because either they didn’t care if Steve heard them or they, like too many other people, believed that because he had a shitty heart and lungs, that meant he was also deaf, dumb, blind, and slow.  
There was no way it couldn’t affect him.  
For many years, Steve had had no one in his corner, aside from his mother and Bucky. They never patronized, bullied him, or treated him as anything but a valuable person, but they were about the only ones. They helped, but kind words were often hard to hold onto in dark times and didn’t make the bad ones hurt any less. It was hard to keep fighting in a world bound and determined to grind him into the dust. He had to learn to fight from an early age.   
All this fighting had taught Steve a few things. One, the people in power, the best and brightest, can be horribly horribly wrong. And two, if he couldn’t believe all the bad things said about him, could he really believe what they also said about Blacks, Jews, and immigrants?  
Steve had been let down by many things in the modern era as well. Maybe they didn’t have any “No Colored” signs anymore, but there was plenty more that angered him. Steve didn’t regret the fighting he had done in WWII, but in many ways, it had been a relief to discard the shield in Siberia and walk away from being Captain America once and for all. The character had become a suffocating straight jacket.  
It felt like an eternity before his mouth relaxed enough to let him speak. When he did, it was through clenched teeth. “What. The. Hell. Nick?!”  
Nick, however, remained calm. “You two have heard of the Children of Hydra project?”   
“I have,” Steve said. The Children project was one of many programs enacted in the wake of the infiltration reveal. Within hours of Natasha dumping the files onto the Internet, SHIELD and many other government organizations started combing through old bases and files, cataloging whatever they found. It made Steve uneasy. While the world needed to know what those sons of bitches had been working on, Steve couldn’t shake the feeling that while some of the people involved might be content to catalog stuff, a few might be interested in Hydra tech for far darker reasons.  
However, trying to reunite children with their families? Steve couldn’t object to that.  
Nick laid out his points carefully and steadily like a schoolteacher dealing with a particularly recalcitrant child. “Protocol dictates that whenever children are rescued from Hydra, DNA samples are taken and sent off to a database to be compared to other samples. These samples were sent off and they pinged on you.”   
“So they are our children?” Steve wrinkled his forehead in confusion. He wasn’t stupid—he understood the basic concept of DNA. While it hadn’t been discovered in the 40s, people understood the idea of genetic inheritance, that tall people tended to have tall children and the like. It was another major pet peeve Steve had about the 21st century, how so many acted like the people of his time were rock-stupid. “HOW?!” Steve’s voice sounded shrill even to himself, but it was like his brain had crashed into a wall.  
Every time Steve thought he was starting to understand the 21st century, something would happen upsetting everything and causing the world to make even less sense than before.   
Steve held no illusions about the era he’d grown up in. He was well aware of the casual racism and sexism. He survived a major economic depression while in his teens. He liked having the Internet, liked being able to access the sum of human knowledge or just watch cat videos and chat with strangers all over the world. He liked that there were now vaccines which protected against most of the childhood sicknesses he had endured and that there were treatments for asthma beyond, “Pray that it stops.”  
What Steve missed, was the clarity, being able to know who were the good guys and who were the bad guys, and what needed to be done. The 21st century just seemed to be nothing but secrets within secrets, and every time Steve felt like he’d reached the bottom, it’d turn out that there was another even more rotten one buried underneath.  
Nick continued. “All Hydra needed, was DNA. When it comes to Barnes, it’s not like they had to go to a lot of trouble. As for you,” he turned to Steve, “there were so many doctors and technicians involved with pulling you from the ice. No doubt, plenty of blood was drawn. And really that’s what was needed: living DNA. It could come from semen, but also blood samples, spinal fluid, tissue samples, or bone marrow…I believe I’ve made my point.  
So many questions sat at Steve’s lips. Really, though, his feelings could be summed up as an inchoate sense of rage. Once again, he wanted to shake down every member of SHIELD and find out just how much did they really know about the infiltration.  
Don’t you bullshit me, Rogers, did you know?!  
He also didn’t appreciate Nick speaking about Buck like he wasn’t there. Judging by the expression on Bucky’s face, Steve understood why.   
He had learned to recognize that look. Steve wasn’t sure how to describe it, except to say that it was like Bucky had checked out. His mouth, slack and gray, and his eyes would have a glazed-over, empty look, the gaze of a man looking far off into the distance at something only he could perceive. Whenever he became stuck like this, it didn’t necessarily mean that Bucky was about to hurt himself or anyone else, but he needed to be grounded, reminded that he was far away from Siberia, the Chair, and Hydra. But Steve needed to get some more information from Nick first.  
“Okay, so what’s being done with them?” Probably a lot of people would be interested in the offspring of Captain America or the Winter Soldier, and not for noble reasons. The issue still sickened Steve, but however these children came into being, they didn’t deserve to be turned into political footballs, with powerful people just itching for an excuse to use them for whatever geopolitical goals they wanted. None of this was their fault. They hadn’t any say in the circumstances of their birth.  
“As you can probably guess, this sort of thing falls far outside the scope of the Children of Hydra project. Almost as soon as the matter came to light, Maria and others within the organization moved to keep things under wraps as much as possible. In our line of work, there’s a reason why we compartmentalize, why we have secrets within secrets.   
“As of right now, Maria has taken the children, along with a select handful of personnel, off-grid. What will happen next, hasn’t been decided.” Fury took a deep breath and looked to both of them.  
Bucky still had that glazed-over, living dead look. Nick probably wanted answers, but this wasn’t a life-threatening scenario that demanded an immediate response. “Could you please give us a moment?” Steve said. The bland pleasantry felt ridiculous under these circumstances, but Steve’s life had felt ridiculous for a long time.

  
He was falling again. The icy air cut at his face and hands, the cold seeping through every stitch of clothing he had on. Bucky was never going to stop falling—there would never be anything but more cold and more falling.  
“Buck?” Steve stood before him, head tilted in confusion. He reached gingerly for his arm and took it.   
The warmth returned to him. The sunlight, Becca nuzzling at his side, helped. The goats were safe, well-fed, and happy. There were no predators lying in wait for either of them. Bucky drew a deep breath, letting it rise within until it mingled with the world around him.  
“Buck, are you okay? Do you need me to do anything else, get you something to eat or drink?”  
Steve sounded as he always did, so confidant and brave. His hands stroked his arm, carefully as though it were something precious. The world was still a whirling mess, but Steve was there.  
Bucky supposed it was fitting that he and Steve had found each other again. Then again, for him, all roads would lead to Steve. Maybe Steve could find someone else and live happily ever after with them, but there would never be anyone for him but Steve. Bucky had vowed to be whatever Steve wanted from him, be it a lover or just a friend.   
However, right now, Bucky couldn’t remember any vows, anything besides kneeling on cold concrete, Rumlow’s coarse laughter in his ears.  
“C’mon you know there were always rumors about him and Rogers boning each other up the ass.” Fire truck red lipstick smeared across his face. He looked like a clown. “And hey, he’s almost as pretty as a girl.” He couldn’t breathe—he was choking.  
“Buck?” Steve’s hands stroked his hair.   
The world of Hydra faded. Bucky was with Steve and no matter where he was, if he was with Steve, he was home. Whenever Steve touched him, it was like his hands removed the things Rumlow and so many others had done to him, back when he had been Hydra’s pet assassin. It was for that reason Bucky prayed endlessly that Steve not find out about some of the things Hydra had done to him. No matter what Steve said, even his forgiveness had its limits.   
“Steve?” He could breathe a little easier now. He squinted, blinded by daylight.  
Steve’s voice was calm, level, and steady. “You had an episode, Buck, but it’s okay. You’re free now. Hydra is gone.”  
Whenever Steve said that, a hard lump rose within him. Bucky wanted to believe him, but Hydra could never really die—its tentacles might shrivel and grow still, but they soon found strength to choke the world again. And Hydra would find him, because Hydra always found him. He belonged to them; they would never let him go. But he repeated those words, because he still wanted desperately to believe they were true. “Hydra is gone,” Bucky said.  
Steve looked back at him and cleared his throat. He wanted him to say more. Bucky had done this exercise many times, but he always waited for Steve to prompt him. It was comforting.  
“Hydra is gone, dead and buried. Hydra won’t come back.” Bucky licked his lips before continuing. “My name is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, no. 3255703856898. I am in Wakanda in the year 2018.” His chest felt lighter after saying this.  
Steve tilted his head. “You feeling better now?”  
Bucky nodded slowly.  
“I know everything that Nick said…it shook me too. But I need to know more about this, so I’m gonna go back inside and talk to him. If you want to stay outside, you can. I’ll tell you as much or as little as you want to know about what information Nick has.”  
“t’s okay, Steve, I’m ready.”  
Steve tilted his head as though he was about to ask some more questions, but thankfully, he didn’t.  
Bucky silently followed him into the hut.  
What followed was a whirlwind of talk, questions asked, answers received and barely understood, the tone often at times angry. During all this, Bucky knew he spoke and said things, but he couldn’t hear his voice or anyone else’s. Still, he must be doing a decent job of pretending to be normal. Otherwise, Steve would have said or done something.  
His focus remained on the photo of himself, his clone, son…he wasn’t sure what to call him. Aside from how thin he was, the child’s resemblance was quite spooky, enough that Bucky wanted to check, see if the kid had some of the scars he did, leftovers when he and Steve were idiotic teenagers messing around with fireworks. However, Bucky soon realized he was mistaken. Scars weren’t a genetic trait. Still, he ran his fingers around the edges of the photograph.   
As he did, an image flashed. He remembered a rocky cliff, saw a woman with long auburn hair falling, breaking her neck on the rocks below—he picked through the contacts of her backpack, but she had nothing that his handler needed or wanted. Still, the Asset has done his job—she was dead and no longer posed a threat to anyone, Hydra or otherwise.  
Steve squared himself, took a deep breath, and spoke. “Is there any way we can see them? Face to face, I mean?”  
His posture was the strong and stalwart kind expected of Captain America, but could not contain the nervous energy flowing through him, causing his fingertips to shake. His voice was also off. It was the reflection of an older Steve Rogers, the sickly artist with a bad heart and bad lungs who spent his life with his back against a wall, forced to fight because it was either that or surrender.  
Nick rose from his chair. “I‘ll need some time to work out an arrangement with Maria, but I could probably manage.”  
They spent the rest of the day tiptoeing around each other. What Nick had told both of them…it was just too big, so big that neither he nor Steve had the words to talk about it. It was probably for the best. The things he was thinking…Bucky knew the boy had nothing to do with whatever he’d experienced at Hydra’s hands, but Christ, he had enough physical reminders of what Hydra put him through. However much it hurt when Tony blasted off his arm, however much of a pain it had been to have to relearn how to do stuff he had more or less mastered by age seven, Bucky felt grateful to not have to see that goddamned thing every time he got dressed, the emblazoned red star announcing to the world who he was and what he represented.   
Shuri was always offering to give him a new arm, but so far, Bucky hadn’t taken her up on the offer. The pain that his old metal arm had given him, wasn’t strictly metaphorical. Despite Hydra’s best efforts, the plain and simple truth was that his musculoskeletal system had not been designed to bear the disproportionate weight of the metal arm. Hydra had made its modifications, but there was only so much they could do, regarding that issue.  
So Bucky had learned to live and operate while in pain, work through it and around it. When he woke up after they had removed what was left of it, the simple joy of being to live and move without pain eclipsed any inconvenience that came with going through life with one arm.  
There really wasn’t much more either could say to another. All of them had questions, but as of right now, they were so massive in scope that neither of them—Steve, Bucky, or Nick—could give word to them. Nick spoke the most freely of them, maybe because he wasn’t as attached to the issue regarding the children. Still, all those years of being “dead” probably took a toll on someone. Being around the guy who made it happen, probably didn’t help either.  
For that reason and for many more, Bucky hung back and kept his distance. He did his duties as host, cooking dinner for his guests and worked out sleeping arrangements, and faked his way through discussions, doing such a good job, Bucky almost forgot that he was lying. It had to be done, though. He would walk endlessly on broken glass, cut his feet to ribbons, before he would let Steve know all that happened in Hydra.  
He didn’t allow himself to break until late at night.  
Bucky slipped out of bed, carefully stepping around in bare feet. From the sounds of things, Steve was dead to the world.  
Becca waited for him in the doorway. Somehow she always knew when he needed her.   
Bucky gave a small smile. He spoke in a low voice. “It’s good to see you, but I need to be outside for a bit. Is that okay?” He stepped outside into the cool night air.   
It was a full moon, so Bucky didn’t have too much trouble navigating through the fields where his goats fed. Becca followed after him.  
Only when he reached the far corner of his fields, when he was absolutely certain that no one could hear him, except for Becca and God, did Bucky finally let himself break, burying his face in Becca’s fur as he cried.  
There were things he could never tell Steve. Everyone had their limits when it came to things, even Steve. Steve could talk a good game about how he could never hold anything Bucky had done on behalf of Hydra against him, but his forgiveness would only go so far.  
He’s not sure how much Steve read of the files pertaining to the Winter Soldier. The file dump on Hydra consisted of materials spanning nearly seven decades, so four years later, most of the governments and various other people going through the files, still hadn’t made much of a dent in the mess. The fact most of these files were encrypted with Hydra regularly changing their codes fairly often didn’t help.  
Steve told him he tried to read some of the files on him, but didn’t get very far into them. The super soldier serum did a lot of things, but it didn’t make him a master code breaker. Bucky didn’t blame him for having tried. When Black Widow dumped all the files onto the Internet, there was no way of controlling what happened with them, who accessed them and why.  
Maybe Steve was telling the truth about having only read a page or two of the Winter Soldier files. Bucky chose to operate under the assumption that he was being honest. Because if Steve knew…  
Oxygen left his lungs for a moment. Bucky took a few deep drags of the late morning air.  
Sometimes he still heard it—coarse laughter in the back of his mind. He’d feel their hands on him, touching him, and-  
He couldn’t tell Steve was because, the truth was, he’d liked it. When they touched him and fucked him, his body lit it up just the way it used to back when he and Steve had made love in their shoebox apartment. No matter how much Bucky insisted that he hated it, that he spent every moment wishing either he would die or the people touching him would, Steve would never understand. Bucky could live with everyone else on the planet hating him, but not Steve.   
Of course, another reason Bucky questioned himself so much regarding it, was, well, weren’t people who were abused supposed to not like sex? But Bucky did like sex. He loved it. Every time he and Steve slept together, it was this strange paradox, where it was like he had stumbled onto wonders the likes of which had never been seen anywhere; every time he slept with Steve, he learned something new about him. Yet at the same time, sleeping with Steve was also infinitely familiar like returning home. He knew Steve by heart and Steve knew him by heart.   
Bucky fell asleep in the far corner of his field, burying his face in Becca’s fur. When the first rays of dawn hit, Bucky dusted himself off, splashed some water on his his face, and went to join Steve and Nick, hoping he didn’t look as crazed and desperate as he felt.


	3. Adjusting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky, Steve, and Seven try to adjust to a new reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for brief mentions of trauma and abuse.

Steve hadn’t bothered to give much thought to the issue of having children. Before the serum, he could scarcely get a girl to look at him, never mind, go that far with him.

His mother stubbornly believed as she always had that if her boy worked hard and did well in school, he would settle into something that paid better than the factories and the railyards, move into a better neighborhood, and meet a woman who would see her boy for the wonderful man he was. “Looks aren’t everything, Steven,” she’d say. “At the end of the day, a woman needs a good man she could count on, someone who will care of her and the children.”

Steve never liked it when people said things like that. Looks weren’t everything, but they mattered a lot. Plus, given the laundry list of ailments to his name, Steve wasn’t sure how well he’d do at taking care of a family. Still, he didn’t dare say any of this, one, because he didn’t want to disappoint her and two, because her stubbornness probably wouldn’t entertain any ideas to the contrary. No matter how many doctors said otherwise, his mother believed wholeheartedly that he would live and accomplish great things. She probably didn’t foresee “government-created super soldier” in the cards, but to be fair, that one was a bit of a stretch for anyone.

Sometimes he wondered what she would have thought of him and Bucky if she had known. Steve never told her about the feelings he had for Bucky, how they had long ceased to be ones of brotherly love and friendship. Steve didn’t have the words to tell her. To the extent anyone talked about same-sex relationships, they were regarded as either silly adolescent fixations that most outgrew or some kind of mental illness. Being Queer meant that there was something psychologically wrong with him.

Sometimes Steve wondered if his mother had known, but for whatever reason, deliberately turned a blind eye to matters for whatever reason. Maybe she thought he would outgrow the relationship or had dove deep into denial. However, neither option sounded like something his mother would do. Steve couldn’t picture her as capable of hating anyone. Even if he had wound up at Sing-Sing for whatever reason, his mother would try to see him as often as she could and mail him care packages, and if she couldn’t do that, she’d send letters. She’d find some way of contacting him, even if it meant using smoke signals.

But there had always been some doubt in the back of his head; even her love had to have its limits. Steve had been bullied pretty much his entire life, so being hated was nothing new to him, but he couldn’t bear the thought of his mother or Bucky hating him. So he stayed silent. It was safer.

There weren’t really any resources for him and Bucky to work things out. They both knew about the birds and the bees, but nothing much beyond that. The rest they learned about from whispers in seedy back alleys and books buried deep into the stacks at the library. It took a while for them to read the subtle signs, the ways Queer people had of communicating with each other.

When he was with Peggy, Steve wouldn’t dare entertain the idea. A goddamn war raged all around them; he would be a fool to bring children into the middle of all this. Still, he had entertained the idea that when the war was over, maybe he and Peggy would start a family, but the matter of Bucky nagged at the back of his head.

Steve would be forever grateful to Dr. Erskine and his serum, not just because it fixed his heart and lungs, all the ailments that had dogged him since childhood, but because it proved once and for all, that there was nothing wrong with the feelings he and Bucky had for each other. The serum was supposed to fix everything that was broken, but it didn’t fix his sexuality, so clearly, it didn’t need fixing.

After being pulled from the ice, the idea of a wife and a family felt beyond unfathomable. Even before the team fell apart and he became an international fugitive, Steve didn’t feel like he belonged in the 21st century. It was like being stranded on some alien planet that looked like Earth and sounded like Earth, but everything was slightly off-kilter. While he and everyone around him were technically speaking the same language, Steve never felt like he fully understood or was understood. Even Sam and Natasha, who came the closest to understanding him, still sounded alien at times.

Bucky, on the other hand, understood. He had grown up in the same culture Steve did. There was a difference between reading history and living through it, knowing all the ideas people talked about and how they shaped the climate around him.

Still, however he had considered the fatherhood question, Steve hadn’t envisioned anything like this.

He hadn’t met his child in person, but Maria had let Steve and Bucky see the two children via videos. Looking at them, had been the most damn surreal moment of his life. Bucky’s words seemed to best describe it, when he said that it was like looking into a very peculiar mirror.

The girl, the one referred to as Eight, was bent over a pad of paper, scrawling something in thick crayon. Steve couldn’t tell what she was drawing, but he had seen some of her other drawings and knew she didn’t draw houses and flowers like most little girls. Her drawings were made up of shapes and shadows, menacing figures drawn in thick crayon. She often pressed down so hard when she was drawing, the crayon would break.

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky whispered. “She even holds her hands the way you do.”

Steve studied the little girl carefully. His fingers itched. He wished he had something to draw on. Sometimes sketching made it easier to see and understand a subject.

A few months after the helicarriers, back when he, Sam, and Natasha were pursuing any possible lead searching for Bucky, Steve had asked Natasha about clones. He had heard about how science could clone animals, so it seemed a question worth asking.

When he initially unmasked the Winter Soldier, the possibility of clones never crossed his mind. It never occurred to Steve that the man before him, was anything other than the man he had loved. Of all the things he had witnessed after being pulled from the ice, that still remained one of the most goddamn surreal moments of his life, how the man before him looked like Bucky and sounded like Bucky, but there was clearly a key part missing from the equation.

However, after all that had had happened, Steve was questioning everything, so he discussed the possibility with Natasha.

She had laid his doubts to rest. “Ignoring all the ethical concerns that comes with the very idea of human cloning, there’s just too much potential for things to go wrong. The project would be a massive boondoggle, a financial sinkhole.”

Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, Natasha continued. “Basic Biology 101, all of us possess 23 pairs or 46 chromosomes that basically dictate a whole lot about who we are. Given the amount and complexity of the genes involved, you wind up with almost an infinite number of ways things could go wrong. One bad gene, one malformed chromosome can wind up doing a whole lotta damage, ensuring that Junior is never born or if they are, they have major deformities.”

Steve had nodded as she talked about all this. It was true that he struggled to understand some of the finer details, but he understood the basics. The science of genetics existed during the 40s, even if their knowledge was minuscule compared to what was known now.

“And of course, another key problem facing such an undertaking,” Natasha said, “is even if you produce a viable embryo, well, you still need a womb to gestate it in. So you have to find a surrogate to carry the child to term. But a surprising amount that shapes who we are, which genes are expressed and which aren’t, is decided by what the baby experiences and is exposed to in utero. So there’s another shitton of factors to take into account.

“But okay, best case scenario, your mad scientist manages to overcome these obstacles. Well, they’ll soon run smack into another really massive one: that clone will come into the world as a baby, as in a completely helpless creature who can’t even support their own head, never mind be put to any useful purpose. So yeah, all that time, money, and effort for what amounts to very little reward.” She drew a deep breath. “As horrible as it sounds, it would have been easier for Hydra to keep torturing Bucky, than attempt something like this.”

Of course, Natasha had been wrong about this. She underestimated the lengths Hydra would go to. It seemed a sadly common mistake.

The few people who knew about this, a handful of people specifically chosen by Maria, were combing through Joseph Devereaux’s records along with other Hydra ones, to create a timeline as to when and what occurred.

Already, they’ve confirmed what everyone suspected that Seven and Eight were merely the first clones to have survived. Records pointed to a gruesome record of miscarriages and stillbirths, resulting in dead babies and dead mothers. They do not know yet if there were any other survivors.

The children were probably closer to amalgamations rather than exact clones. Cursory study of their blood work points to an unknown third party’s DNA being involved, probably as an attempt to strengthen and plug in gaps in their genetic code. Blood work also revealed the presence of other strange substances likely unrelated to the super soldier serum coursing through them, a compound referred to as GC418-I in Devereaux’s notes.

Of the two children, Seven was currently the one they knew the most about, to the extent anything was known about the children. When his DNA was ran through the system, there had been a hit on an unsolved case, regarding young woman known as the Bear Point Jane Doe. She had been found dead at the bottom of a cliff some five years ago. The body had been too badly decomposed to for authorities to rule whether the fall had been a homicide or merely an accident.

Naturally this discovery had reopened a case that had long laid dormant; the authorities in the area were already in touch with SHIELD, hoping that they would finally be able to ID this woman and maybe find her family. Even with the DNA match, it wasn’t going to be easy. The woman had been a Hydra agent and changed aliases more often than most people changed their socks. 

The boy known as Seven had started on another drawing. It looked like he was drawing a tree. From what Steve heard, the boy was obsessed with trying to draw this one tree and would throw fits because he couldn’t get it right. The few times he spoke anything beyond one-word answers, he talked of his Nana and how he was going to find her. No one had had the heart to tell him that his Nana was likely dead.

Maria and Nick had said that neither he nor Bucky were obligated to take the children in. They swore up and down that they would track down a safe home for them, if they didn’t feel capable of raising these children. But after being lied to so many times, Steve wasn’t sure if he trusted anyone besides Bucky. There were probably too many people out in the world, who would regard these children as nothing more than walking sacks of super-soldier serum.

Steve hadn’t decided on anything yet. In a few days, the children were going to be flown in to Wakanda, and he would get to see them in the flesh. He would not make any decisions without seeing them personally.

As he continued to watch the video, Steve realized it had been a while, since he heard a word from Bucky about anything. Steve glanced at him, trying to gauge his lover’s mood.

Bucky had that blank, faraway look on his face, eyes glazed over with little sign of any life behind them.

Steve swallowed. He knew that look. It meant that Bucky was slipping again. He hadn’t gone full-blown yet, but he’d better keep a close watch.

When he became unmoored, Bucky was always more of a danger to himself than anyone else. He’d shutdown, terrified that he had hurt someone or that he was going to hurt someone. Often, he reverted to speaking in Russian, begging for forgiveness, begging to be given an assignment to prove his worth.

When he became that bad, it could be all but impossible to reach him. Steve often was the only one who could. No matter how worked up or paranoid Bucky became, part of him understood on some primal level that Steve wouldn’t hurt him. Steve wouldn’t do anything to him that didn’t need to be done. But he understood why others found his behavior frightening. Sometimes Bucky scared even him.

Bucky wanted this child to not exist. He wouldn’t kill him; he had done enough killing. He just wanted the child to not exist, to not be there on the screen, sitting beside the little girl, coloring.

Guilt nagged at him, reminding Bucky that the kid hadn’t been given any choice in all this. The kid didn’t choose to be born and had nothing to do with whatever humiliations he experienced at Hydra’s hands. Bucky knew all this, knew what a monster it made him. Not only did he hate a child, he hated his child.

At the same time, his revulsion was intermingled with pity. Every time he saw the kid limp across the screen, saw him hunched over, drawing, Bucky wanted to reach through the screen, do whatever he could to fix everything. Through the thin fabric of his tee shirt, Bucky saw some of the web of thick scars that covered his back.

Bucky swallowed. He had his own collection of similar scars on his back, which remained, despite his advanced biology. Honestly, Bucky couldn’t remember when he had earned them. In Hydra, all the pain blurred together.

Bucky still hadn’t mentioned his role in the death of the kid’s beloved Nana. He just didn’t want to talk about it. All those SHIELD code-breakers would probably work out what happened eventually. If directly asked, he would admit it, but otherwise, he wasn’t going to say a word.

Truth be told, her death was one of his easier kills. There really wasn’t much planning behind it, but there didn’t need to be any real planning. He had been sent to take out a physicist plotting to defect. After that guy had been dealt with, Pierce sent him to Bear Point State Park to deal with her, probably because he had been in the area at the time.

He had the element of surprise; all he had to do, was shove her. He saw her falling, auburn hair streaming around her, hands clawing at the open air. Judging by the way she landed, it was a broken neck that killed her. Then he returned to Pierce and gave his report like he always did.

When the feed disappeared, the three of them, Steve, Nick, and Bucky stood around in a silence that felt like an eternity. Bucky prayed that he could keep all his dark and horrible thoughts buried deep inside. They were nudging at his ribs, trying to get out.

“So now what?” Bucky breathed. Everything was just too much. He wished he could wake up from this nightmare and just herd goats in peace. But Hydra would always follow him. Hydra would never die. Hydra would never let him go.

Steve’s face was stiff and solemn. “I stand by what I’ve already said. Before I sign any papers or make any decisions, I want to see them, face-to-face, in-person visitations.”

“Steve,” Bucky said, shaking his head, “y’know we don’t have to legally do anything. Parenting is hard enough, but in case you’ve forgotten, we’re both international fugitives. I don’t even want to know how much more difficult it’d be to throw kids into all this. Let Maria take care of them.”

“I. Want. To. See. Them.” Every word Steve spoke, coiled with tension and rage. It was clear: Steve had made his decision. Bucky would have better luck trying to stop a Mack truck careening downhill without brakes, than he would trying to talk Steve out of this.

He shook his head. “All right, Steve, if that’s what you really want. Just promise me that before you do anything, you’ll really think about this. This isn’t something you can solve by punching your way out of it.” Bucky paused to let his words sink in.

“I will, Buck, I promise.”

Bucky wasn’t sure how much he could trust these words. He had known Steve for entirely too long, knew him better than he could ever know himself.

His father used to say, regarding Steve, that “if that kid ever had the size to back up his stubbornness, he could be a real threat,” and goddammit, he had been right. Bucky wanted to invent time travel just so he could punch his old man for being so damn right.

His father also said things like, “If Custer had had Steve on his side, the Indians would have lost.”

Bucky wasn’t sure if that was true. Maybe the battle would have unfolded about the same way, but somehow the consequences would have been even more devastating. Given that the battle resulted in Custer and his army being massacred down to the last man, that said something.

Still, Bucky would try to keep Steve from going too out of bounds. Maybe he’d fail, but at least he could say that he tried.

Seven did not like these people. They were better than Hydra, but they weren’t his Nana. They didn’t do the voices right when they read him books and they were always trying to make him eat. Seven didn’t know why they were so bound and determined to stuff him full of food. It weighed him down, made him sluggish, and he needed all of his senses if he was going to find Nana. He laid back in his bed, looked up at the ceiling and tried to think.

Eight laid a few feet away, rubbing her hands and face against the sheets. Around her, she had carefully placed her treasures, not just her stuffed toys, but a bunch of other random junk. Eight was obsessed with holding onto anything that was given to her, even if it was just the plastic silverware and styrofoam plates they used to eat dinner. She also hoarded food, a habit these people were trying to fix.

They probably liked her better than they liked him. Seven didn’t mind. He didn’t want anyone but his Nana. He closed his eyes trying to dredge up any details that might help him find Nana, but all he had were images. Still, they comforted him; it was because of his Nana, because of these memories he had survived Hydra. Whenever things got too bad, he would close his eyes and disappear, go back to the cabin in the woods.

It had been so many years, but Seven could still picture it. There were two rooms, a small one which he and Nana slept in and a larger one where they spent most of their time. Nana had always talked about getting him his own room, but Seven never minded. He liked having her close by, so that if he had a nightmare, she would be there to help him.

Back then, most of his fears centered around the root cellar. There was one a little ways from the house, but also one inside the house, underneath a hatch in the floor. Nana was always trying to get him to be less afraid of the cellar, but it was just so cold, quiet, and dark. It felt like it would swallow him up and never let him go. Seven hadn’t learned that there were far worse things than the cellar.

His cabin had a hand pump, an outhouse, and a wood stove which heated up the place. Close his eyes and Seven could see his Nana bent over the stove, feeding it.

At the time Hydra took him from his Nana, Seven was starting to figure out that living situation was rather odd. From the picture books he read and his occasional trips into town, Seven knew that other children lived in houses with electricity. Other children didn’t have to go outside to use the bathroom or get water. He used to ask Nana all the time why they couldn’t have electricity or water inside the house. Nana said it was too expensive.

Sometimes they would stay with a friend of Nana’s. He had a very big house which had electricity and water inside the house. Sometimes he used to let Seven ride his tricycle from one end of the hall to another. He also had something called a TV and when Seven stayed there, he’d get to watch stuff on it.

He often asked Nana why they didn’t just live at that house, instead of the cabin in the woods. Nana would say that it wasn’t safe. Seven didn’t understand why, but he trusted his Nana. She knew so many things; she would keep him safe. Of course, it turned out they weren’t safe at the cabin, and as Seven remembered the day the Hydra came…the oxygen disappeared. He couldn’t breathe. Seven gripped the edges of his blanket, thinking about Nana until the air came back.

He looked around the room. Eight was fast asleep, curled up on the floor beside him. The way she was curved so tightly in herself, reminded Seven of a stray cat that used to hang around the cabin, how it slept.

Seven closed his eyes as tight as he could. He needed to remember as much as he could about Nana and the cabin if he were to find her. He knew Nana had spent all the past few years searching for him; it was time Seven did his part. Nana had to be somewhere. Maybe he should go back to the cabin. If she was trying to find him, it might be a good place to start. Or he could...

Seven closed his eyes, trying to remember as much as he could about Nana’s friend, the one with the big house. He could somewhat recall what he looked like, long, skinny, his hair a mop of black curls that was always a frizzy mess…

JESS! The name struck Seven like a lightning bolt. His Nana’s friend was named Jess. But Seven still didn’t know where he was or where to begin looking.

He sighed. This was going to be more difficult than he thought. Seven felt his Nana’s gentle hand on him, saying the words she so often said to him: _pay attention._

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” he whispered these words as he drifted off.

They wake him and Eight up the next morning, rushing them to breakfast.

His plate overflowed with food. It was all too much. Too much in amount, but also in taste…so many different textures. It was so sweet, so sweet Seven gagged at the sickly sensation of it. Worst of all, these people were, once again, constantly trying to make him eat. They kept shoving forks and spoons at him, telling him he needed to eat more, even though Seven felt so packed full of food that it must have risen to his eyeballs. How could anyone possibly eat so much? He tried to hide bits of it in his cheeks, so he could spit it out later, but they wouldn’t let him. Finally, these people let him and Eight leave the table.

They told them to pack, that they were going to some place whose name Seven couldn’t pronounce. All he knew was that it began with a “W.”

_Nana holding him in his lap, drawing strange characters in chalk. “See how it even looks like a wave? That’s how you know it’s a W. W is for waves or water or-_

“Waters,” Seven murmured. Nana’s friend, Jess, had a big gate with the letter “W” on it. And he had the W because his last name was Waters.

Seven practically skipped as they loaded him aboard the plane. All he had to do, was find someone named Jess Waters and he’d find Nana.

Seven still didn’t know where these people were taking him, but it didn’t matter. He would find Nana, and then he wouldn’t have to live with them anymore.

Eight squeezed his hand, something she often did when she was nervous. A hollow pit rose in Seven’s stomach. No matter what happened, he had to make sure Eight was going to be okay. Maybe Nana would let her live with them. But if for some reason, they couldn’t have Eight live with them, Seven still vowed to make sure she was taken care of, that good people would have her, not Mr. Rusk. Never Mr. Rusk.


	4. The Decision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky and Steve finally come to a decision.

The children arrived in Wakanda a few days later. Though Steve had had plenty of time to prepare, seeing them step off the plane still made his breath catch in his chest.

The little girl stepped off the plane first, her face barely visible under the massive hat she wore. From what Steve had heard, she took that hat with her everywhere, and they had a hard time convincing her to take it off. By all accounts, Eight was a hoarder, wanting to hold onto everything given to her, even if it was an old candy wrapper. Steve heard it was a common trait among the Children of Hydra. When everything, even the most basic essentials of life, hinged on their performance or ranking, naturally they would want to hold onto everything they could, squirrel it away somewhere safe, lest it be taken from them.

Seven followed behind her, his limp quite visible as he stepped off the plane. His face was cold, blank, and set, revealing nothing. While Eight made some effort to wave hello, he was stony and silent, barely bothering to give the slightest acknowledgment of anyone around him.

Bucky had said something about how looking at these children was like looking into a very peculiar mirror, and he was right. Every time Steve looked at Eight, he saw pieces of himself in the color of her eyes, the shape of her face. It wasn’t an exact likeness—she more resembled his mother, Sarah—but it was fairly close.

The children stepped tentatively, reminding Steve of Bambi on the ice. Steve tried to put aside his feelings of discomfort, regarding everything, and give them a proper welcome. “Hello, why don’t you come inside and have something to eat.” The children followed inside. Bucky sat them around the table and served breakfast.

Steve studied his lover’s face, trying to gauge his feelings, but it was hard to tell much of anything. Bucky’s face was an impassive mask that revealed nothing. He had hardly spoken since. hearing the news, and Steve still didn’t know what to do.

He had asked Sam many times for advice regarding Bucky. He still didn’t understand much of it. It wasn’t that mental illness and trauma hadn’t existed—they had always existed—but the vocabulary and the ideas surrounding them were completely different.

PTSD had been called shellshock and the cause was attributed to the new explosive shells used in the war, the theory being that the sound they made, did something to the brain. The idea that people who weren’t soldiers could experience this, was unheard of. Treatment was nonexistent. For most people in the neighborhood, the only treatment they could ever afford, was the state institution, and generally people tried to avoid that as much as possible. Everyone knew once someone went to one of those places, the only way they left, was in a pine box.

The general rule was that a person should just grit their teeth and bear it as best as they can. From what Steve could tell, the men dealt with their emotional pain by either drinking themselves to death, picking fights, or beating their wives and kids. The women either drank or cried into their pillows late at night.

Steve guessed even if things hadn’t unfolded the way they did for him and Bucky, they still couldn’t be the same people they had been before they went to war. After escaping Zola’s table at Azzano, Bucky had been quieter, more sullen. There was a darkness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before and never quite went away, even when he was out carousing with the commandos. Of course what happened at Azzano seemed a pittance compared to what Bucky went through after falling from the train.

The little girl, Eight, eagerly devoured her food, licking her plate afterwards, but the boy, Seven, picked and nibbled at his food like a rabbit.

It was something Steve had read about from the files given to him, how the two children were almost polar opposites. Eight was emotionally volatile and fearful, whereas Seven seldom displayed any emotion aside from the stone-faced expression he usually had. Seven had to be constantly coaxed to eat more, whereas Eight would eat herself sick if not carefully monitored.

Steve shook his head. It felt awful, referring to them by numbers, but the children were experiencing enough upheaval in their lives. Let them be given some say in their names, since they had been given so little when it came to everything else in life.

There were so many questions sitting on his lips, but Steve kept them to himself. The children likely wouldn’t be able to answer them and with some, Steve would have to be able to put them into words, before he could ask them.

At first, things went reasonably well, or at least as well as a situation this bizarre could go. The children ate. Steve amused the children by drawing animals and cartoon characters. Eight carried on a stream of nervous, bird-like chatter, asking question after question about each one. Even Seven looked a little impressed, though his face soon resumed its mask-like appearance.

Seven tugged on the edge of his shirt. His fingers shook. “Um, could you draw people?”

“Yeah, I could,” Steve said. He was out of practice—hadn’t done really anything besides little cartoons or sketches of skylines—but he could manage something if it would make the kid happy. “What do you want me to draw? I don’t have any of my color pencils, so it’d be in black and white. Is that okay?”

Seven shook his head, hiding his face behind his dark brown bangs.

“Well, maybe I’ll try some other time.”

Bucky hung back silently , while everything happened, washing the dishes and sweeping the floor. It annoyed Steve a little. He kept wanting to say, “Yeah, this is just as weird for me as it is for you, but c’mon. They’re just kids.” But he didn’t want to start a fight in front of the children, especially Eight who flinched at the slightest uptick in someone’s voice.

“Hey, do you want to see the goats.” Bucky’s long limbs shook and his smile was strained, but it made Steve feel a little better, knowing that Bucky was at least trying. He took them outside.

The goats were neighing and fussing, nudging and shoving Bucky as he fed and watered them.

Eight shrieked and tried to hide behind Bucky’s legs.

“Shh…it’s okay,” he murmured, gently patting the little girl’s back.

“They’re not going to eat me?” Her voice came out in a squeak.

“No,” Bucky said. “They only eat grass, hay, and oats, not people.”

Trembling, Eight reached out and touched the goat’s head. As she grew calmer, she eagerly petted and hugged the goats.

Even Seven put forth some effort, his face relaxing and displaying some natural curiosity. Hands shaking, he held out some grass, jumping when one of the goats snatched it up.

All was well. Then the dog showed up.

Steve had teased Bucky about Becca before, talking about how as big as she was, she was closer to a small bear than a dog. It was completely understandable why someone might see a hundred and forty pound beast bounding towards them and freak out, especially if that someone was a forty pound child.

Eight shrieked and tore at her flesh with her fingernails. She hollered even louder when Steve grabbed her, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t let her hurt herself like that.

Becca yelped, then shrank away.

A large rock laid near where she had stood. Not too far away, stood Seven, holding another large one in his hands.

Bucky was the first to speak. “Becca, go away.” And she obeyed, running out into the fields. He advanced on Seven who still held the rock in his small hands, knuckles white with strain, face steady as he trembled in every limb.

Bucky grabbed him by the arm, causing him to drop the rock. He looked Seven dead in the eyes. “What were you thinking? What the hell were you thinking?”

The child didn’t answer. He remained stone-faced and steady.

Steve soon stepped between the two. “C’mon, Buck, he’s just a child.”

He shook his head. “I can’t have him braining my dog with a rock, Steve.”

“I think he’s learned his lesson.” Steve wasn’t sure how well he did, masking his anger, but Bucky soon let the child go. He resumed playing with the goats. Once Seven was out of earshot, he turned back to Bucky. “Seriously, what were you thinking?”

Steve’s words echoed in Bucky’s ears and really, there was no safe way to answer his question. Bucky muttered a quick, “I’m sorry,” and he and Steve watched the children play.

Bucky knew what a horrible thing it made him, but seeing the child brought up such a sense of revulsion in him. He wouldn’t hurt a kid—he just wanted the child to not exist.

As he thought these things, part of him tried in vain to interject logic into the conversation, reminding him that the boy had been thrown into all this through no fault of his own, and he had nothing to do with whatever humiliations Bucky underwent at the hands of Hydra. And Bucky knew all this was true, but that didn’t stop all the bad thoughts; it only added a thick layer of guilt to everything else. And he hadn’t even gotten to the part about killing the kid’s Nana.

From what he had heard, the various caregivers who had looked after Seven the past few days, had tried to gently break the news that his Nana was dead, but it didn’t seem to sink in. Bucky wondered if anything short of seeing photos of her broken, partially decomposed body lying at the base of the cliff, would convince the kid.

He remembered her death. Like he told Tony Stark, he remembered all of them. Given how she died, she probably didn’t have much time to register what happened. Again, her death had been one of the easier ones he had carried out. She was traveling along a rough, rocky cliff edge, and he had the element of surprise. All he had to do, was shove her.

Bucky could see her, clawing at the empty air. She died of a broken neck, so her death had been relatively quick. But the kid probably wouldn’t take much comfort in that knowledge.

“Christ…” he murmured.

In addition to memories of HYDRA, Bucky found himself thinking about his own father.

He guessed by the standards of today, they would say that his father was an alcoholic, but back then, he wouldn’t have been judged too harshly for how much he drank. Most of the adults in the neighborhood where he and Steve grew up, either drank like fish, smoked like chimneys, or both. Life was so hard and uncertain that it was understood that everyone needed something to get them through the day. Generally unless someone was drinking themselves and their families out of house and home, people were willing to let them slide. It was regarded more as a bad habit, like biting their nails, than anything else.

The general ethos regarding discipline was “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” Bucky had gotten his backside striped on many occasions, by his father, his mother, and other adults, teachers and principals mostly. It was just how things were done. The idea of it being wrong, was foreign to the adults he had known.

Bucky didn’t know if this did anything to improve his behavior. It probably didn’t, just made him sneakier and a better liar. Often at school, if given a choice between getting paddled or clapping erasers, he’d choose the paddle because it was over faster and afterwards, he could brag about how he barely felt a thing.

Of course, these children probably didn’t need the rod. Both of them had experienced enough cruelty at the hands of the adults in their life. They didn’t need another big and scary adult hitting them.

Still, the incident with Seven and his dog…Bucky knew he had done a piss-poor job of handling it, but something about the whole scenario just made him snarl.

Steve would say that he should talk to him or someone else about his problems, maybe have Sam point him towards somebody. But Bucky was tired of his problems. Already the memories and the guilt played in his head on an endless loop; sitting on some head-shrinker’s couch talking about it wasn’t going to do anything. He wasn’t even sure if there were shrinks who could handle his kind of problems and…even though the Wakandans had fixed him, made it so the words didn’t work anymore, Bucky could still see the slim man holding the book, steadily reciting those words, feel himself being dismantled. No, he wouldn’t have anymore to do with psychologists or doctors.

The next few days were actually fairly pleasant and calm, or at least as pleasant and calm as a situation this bizarre could be. Bucky, Steve, and the children fell into a comfortable rhythm. They spent most of their days running after the goats or just wandering aimlessly. Steve would draw little pictures for them, going so far as to get some colored pencils so he could draw a picture of Seven’s Nana. Seven had been greatly relieved to have this drawing. He folded it up and carried it with him wherever he went.

Once she had been reassured that neither the goats nor Becca would eat her, Eight grew very fond of both of them. She loved nothing more than to give them flowers and chitchat with them, stroking their heads as they laid in her lap.

The only bad moment had been when there was a thunderstorm one evening.

At the sight of the lightning bolt cutting across the sky, Eight went into absolute hysterics, running and shrieking like she was being tortured, tearing at the pale flesh of her arms. She yanked out chunks of her hair as she begged between sobs, hollering over and over, “I will be good!”

Steve had held her tight in his arms, trying to keep her from hurting herself. In an odd way, it seemed to calm her, being held tightly, feeling Steve’s bulk around her. It was further proof as to how the children were almost polar opposites. Eight craved stimulation, loved nothing more than to be touched and held, wanting to rub her hands and face across everything. Seven, on the other hand, seemed entirely made of stone, remaining stiff and ramrod straight whenever anyone tried to touch or hug him. Eight chattered like a little bird to anything and anyone who would listen, carrying on conversations with cups and chairs when she had no one else to talk to. Whereas Seven had barely said anything.

It was late in the evening when Steve found him. There was nothing in the air, save for the sounds of nocturnal creatures on the move.

Bucky sat outside with Becca laying at his feet, just listening to the sounds of the night symphony at work. He liked this part of the day best, the world so much calmer and less frenzied than during the day.

Steve sat beside him, startling him just a little.

He wrapped a strand of hair around his finger. “So, uh, how are the kids?”

Steve shrugged. “They’re curled up on the floor, fast asleep. I suppose I should have put them in a bed, but they seem so much happier on the floor.”

“Hey, if it doesn’t hurt them, might as well leave them be.”

“Yeah…” Steve drew a sharp breath. “Buck, I think I’ve made a decision regarding the kids.” He took him by the hand. “I think I want to keep them.”

It took a while before the words really landed. When they did, Bucky choked. “Steve, are you out of your goddamned mind?!”

His words cut through the night air. Bucky wished he had been just a little bit more tactful in his choice of words, but the cold shock of those words overrode his judgment.

Despite all this, Steve remained serene. It was an annoying habit of Steve’s, how he often managed to be at his calmest, when proposing the craziest of ideas. Still, even by his standards, this was out there.

“Steve, in case you’ve forgotten, we’re both currently international fugitives. These aren’t the ideal circumstances to play house.” Bucky knew how it was with Steve. The surest way to make him dig in his heels, was the presence of an opposing force. Still, he had to do something.

“I know all this, but I can’t abandon these kids.”

“You could let Maria take care of them,” Bucky said. “It wouldn’t be abandoning them, letting her find someone to take them.”

“It feels like it.” Steve shook his head. “I just keep thinking that despite all Maria’s efforts, someone’s going to find out about these kids, someone who will see them as walking sacks of super soldier serum.”

“And you think that you’ll be able to keep them all at bay?”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” Steve said. “Look, this may be a crazy idea, but I keep feeling like this is something I should really do. I’m not crazy about how they came to be, but like it or not, they’re here and as their father, I feel like I should take this on. You can decide what you want regarding Seven, seeing as he is yours, but I’m taking both of them if I can.”

Bucky swallowed. He scratched Becca with his foot, trying to find his words. He’s having flashbacks to that night at the Expo, the moment when he’d known that there was no talking Steve out of going to war. Once again, his father’s words about how if Steve ever had the size to back up his stubbornness, he could be a real threat to the world, echoed in his head.

But this was different. When Steve enlisted, he was only risking his own life. With these kids, it was a different matter entirely. Though talking Steve out of something when he’s really settled on it, could often be a task that would give Sisyphus pause, Bucky had to try.

“Steve, once again, I have to remind you that we’re international fugitives. We literally can’t stick our heads up anywhere unless we want the authorities to descend on us like locusts. Neither of us has any real money. One thing hasn’t changed since the 40’s: kids cost a lot of money. And it’s one thing to mind some kids for a few days, but it’s a different thing entirely to do it day-in, day-out. It’s not just your life that’s involved here.”

“I know, Buck. I know.”

There was silence for what felt like an eternity, before Steve finally spoke. “I haven’t been completely sitting around doing nothing all these days. I’ve been emailing and texting T’Challa, just seeing if we can work out a few hypotheticals. I guess I should have brought it up with you first, but everything was just so uncertain and tentative right now. Sorry…”

“It’s okay, Steve.”

“Any way, T’Challa has all kinds of property stashed all over the world. Wakanda may have stayed isolated until recently, but they’ve had spies stationed all over the world, so they can keep an eye on things. Basically, he’s offering to let us stay at one of his properties in exchange for doing some light espionage.” Steve’s eyes seemed to shine despite the dim light. “I was thinking that we could find some out of the way place and set up a home. We can live under assumed names, the kids can go to school and therapy and we’ll take assignments from T’Challa. There are some finer details to hammer out, but that’s the overall plan right now.”

Then Steve blushed in a way Bucky hadn’t seen since that moment all those years ago, a thirteen-year-old Steve Rogers shyly asked him for a kiss.

“Sorry,” he said, “I’m assuming things again. Buck, if you don’t want to do this, it’s okay. I don’t want you to feel like you have to follow me everywhere.”

“It’s okay, Steve.” It took Bucky a bit to overcome that block of ice which sat inside him, so he could speak. “Look, could you give me a few days before I decide on anything? I imagine you and T’Challa will need to work out a lot of details, so let me have a few days. I promise I’ll have an answer for you soon.”

“Okay.”

Steve strolled back inside the hut, but Bucky needed a few moments to himself, outside in all the quiet.

Steve seemed so sure about everything; meanwhile Bucky wanted to run and hide under the bed, wait for it all to pass him by like a dumb kid.

Sometimes Bucky wondered if it was worth being alive, if it meant being afraid all the time. Then again, he had lived with fear for so long, he didn’t know what it was like to not be afraid.

The next few days seemed to simultaneously drag and rush by. Their routine remained much as it had before, but now the question hung over Bucky like the sword of Damocles.

Even before he fell from the train, Bucky hadn’t given much thought to the idea of kids. There was the obvious problem in that they were in the middle of a goddanged war, but there were more subtle issues.

It had hurt, seeing the way Steve lit up around Peggy. It hurt so bad.

At the same time, Peggy represented something that Bucky could never provide. With Peggy, Steve could have something resembling a normal life, do the everyday, boring couple stuff he couldn’t with Bucky. With Peggy, there was a clear and natural trajectory to follow: marriage, kids, retirement, then the grave. With Bucky, it became much harder to discern.

There wasn’t anyone Steve or he could look to as a model, especially when they were young and hadn’t learned the secret ways Queer people had of communicating with each other. All this terminology—the LGBT, QUILTBAG bit—was strange and new to him, and Bucky still didn’t fully understand it, didn’t know what to call himself. He still liked girls, liked the electric feeling they gave him whenever they smiled or flirted with him, but Steve…Steve was the one he loved. Sometimes he thought the best way of describing his sexuality would be to say that he was Steve-sexual, because that was how it worked for him. For Bucky, all roads would always lead back to Steve. He would love Steve in whatever form he took, whether Erskine’s machine had somehow turned him into a Sarah or a two-headed octopus.

Maybe it was different for Steve, though. But the whole thing was just a confusing mess; the more Bucky tried to parse it out, the more confusing it became.

Steve had an easier time with the kids, settling into fatherhood easily, but for Bucky, it remained a complicated mess. Eight reminded him so much of his baby sister, Rebecca, that he soon fell into a natural rhythm with her.

After reading up on himself at the Smithsonian, Bucky had read up on his siblings. The exhibit said he was the oldest of four children, and it felt like he should know something about the family he belonged to.

Louisa had died in a car accident a couple of years after his capture. One night, her idiot boyfriend was driving down the road too fast, screwed up a turn, and got both of them killed. His father had drank himself to death not long before he’d been drafted. His mother died at a ripe old age in ’74.

Sally died a couple of years before Hydra was revealed to the world after having spent 70 years living together with a woman named Katherine. And Bucky couldn’t deny that when he found out about this, he laughed a little. She too, had found love in her own locker room. Bucky couldn’t help but wonder how different things would have been if he had known. Maybe the two couples could have paired off. That way everyone would have a spouse and family to keep up appearances, and everyone could have an easier time being with the person they loved. Though the idea of Steve being married to his sister was too bizarre to fathom.

And then there was Rebecca…Bucky had been eight when she was born, and he guessed he never really stopped thinking of her as his baby sister, though she was now an elderly widow with kids, grandkids, and great grandkids.

The most Bucky had done when it came to Rebecca, was to check out a Facebook page her grandkids had set up, one of those family pages. He knew damn well not to contact her. He was an international fugitive wanted by more governments than he could count, for chrissakes. Even if he wasn’t, though, Bucky would still leave her alone. Rebecca had built a happy life apart from him; she did not need the trouble he’d bring.

As for his interactions with Seven, those still provoked a complicated stew of feelings. He wanted to wrap his arms around the boy, and apologize for everything Hydra had put him through, promise that no one would ever hurt him again.

But Bucky could also see and feel so many hands on him.

( _C’mon you know he and Rogers were probably boning each other every chance they could get.)_

He still heard their coarse laughter, could taste Rumlow’s cock in his mouth.

For this reason alone, Bucky knew he was better off staying out of this. Let Steve take the kids and settle somewhere without him. Yet the prospect of being able to live with Steve and not just see him on the occasional visit/Zoom phone call represented a powerful temptation. Yet that would mean dealing with the children. Finally, he came to a decision.

It was the dead of night and he had survived another nightmare, the same ones as before. Steve was fast asleep, all but dead to the world, and Bucky didn’t want to wake him. So he went to get a glass of water, hoping it would calm his nerves.

He nearly tripped over Seven while walking to the kitchen. Bucky sighed. He and Steve had tucked both him and Eight in a back room together. How in God’s name had he wound up here?

The little boy’s body was curled up, clenched as tight as a fist. He shook like a leaf in a breeze and after a bit, Bucky heard him crying. They were pitiful cries, closer to pained whimpers than full-blooded crying.

Bucky dropped to the floor and rested beside the kid.

It seemed a form of magic—maybe not the kind that heals cancer or anything like that, but magic nonetheless—how as he laid down beside the kid and held him, how quickly the boy calmed down. The boy’s breathing settled and for a moment, it was just the two of them.

“You and me against the world…” It all seemed like a cruel joke as Bucky thought about all the dangers lying in wait for this child, how many countries would snatch him and try to harvest as much super soldier serum from him as they could. He was so thin and so small.

Once the child had settled down, Bucky scooped him up and carried him, laying him beside Eight who dozed peacefully. Then he went outside and joined Becca who slept close to the door of his hut.

“All right,” Bucky murmured as he stroked her ears, “this may be an incredibly dumb idea. I dunno. I’m not sure where it ranks on the list of dumb stuff I’ve done. But I feel like I need to do this, so I’m going to try. Hand of God, though, if I ever abuse either of them, I will call it quits and come back here.”

Saying all this scared him, but it also only further cemented these words. He would try. He was scared as hell, but he was going to try.

Only when it’s late at night, can Seven really do some thinking. He doesn’t want to go back to Dr. Devereaux’s lab, but it was admittedly quieter there with less for him to think about. Ever since being rescued, it’s been a nonstop blur of names and faces, people asking him questions and giving him things. They seemed to be obsessed with stuffing him with food. Seven doesn’t know why. It was hard for him to think without the hollowness he had long become accustomed to.

Tomorrow, they would be moved somewhere else, going to live in Canada with these people named Steve and Bucky. Seven can’t say that he was looking forward to the trip.

At first, he had been a little excited. Canada sounded like it was close to California, based on what he knew about the alphabet. From there, it couldn’t be too hard to find Nana and Jess. But apparently, alphabetical order didn’t apply to countries and states. Seven would be closer to California than he was now, but California would still be far away.

Seven shook his head. He had spent every moment he could racking his brain, trying to remember everything Nana taught him about California and everything else. “Life’s a rough place, Sunbeam,” she always said, “and you gotta be clever if you’re going to make it. Cleverness will get you further than strength.”

She taught him so many things before the Hydras took him. One lesson that stood out to him in particular, was a story she told him.

“I’d been captured by some bad people. There were too many of them for me to take head on, so I had to wait for the right time to escape.” Seven could see her tucking a strand of auburn hair back as she continued. “When you’re dealing with bad people, you gotta be smart and try to keep them off balance.”

Nana talked about this a lot, the importance of keeping a bad person off balance. She used a wide variety of ways to do so, wearing disguises, faking injuries, or pretending to be stupid. In the story Seven was thinking about, Nana tricked them by pretending to not know English, so they would talk about their plans right in front of her, and she could collect information without them knowing.

“You should always have one card you keep close to your chest until you need it,” she told him.

And Seven had every intention of following her advice. The last of the drugs had left his system and already, he felt the Push returning to him. The Push was a very powerful card, one that Seven knew he needed to make careful use of if he was going to find Nana.


End file.
